


Siren's Lullaby

by UmbraeCalamitas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Lots of It, Angel Sam Winchester, Anxiety, BAMF Dean Winchester, BAMF Gabriel (Supernatural), BTGOG-verse, Blanket Permission to do Art, Cas & Sam are bros, Castiel is the best big brother, Chuck is God, Dark Magic, De-Aged Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester is Protective of Sam Winchester, Emotional Baggage, Enochian, Family as Flock, Flashbacks, Fledglings, Fluff and Angst, Gabriel (Supernatural) is Loki, Gen, Grief, Hallucinations, Hellhounds, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Gabriel, Insecure Sam Winchester, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Loss, M/M, Morpheus is the best little doggie, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Castiel/Dean Winchester, Pre-Relationship, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Gabriel, Sam Winchester's curiosity, Seriously do all the art, So much WORSE, Team as Family, Tearjerker, TheRiverScribe, What do you call a fanfic of a fanfic?, Who is sometimes a big doggie, Wingfic, and then it gets worse again, angel grace, bring your tissues, but make sure you share links, fanfic-ception, i want to see it ALL, loss of a loved one, major angst, terrible memories, then it gets a little better, there will be crying, yours
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-02-20 13:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13147827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmbraeCalamitas/pseuds/UmbraeCalamitas
Summary: When Sam stumbles across an object of dark magic in the bunker, he is sealed inside a room and forced to suffer through his greatest fears. Dean and the others desperately try to find out how to rescue him from behind wards that can stop an archangel, but even if they get him out of the room, will they be able to save him from his own mind?Inspired by theBy the Grace of Godseries, by TheRiverScribe.- written after chapter six ofTeach Your Children.





	1. Ohrwurm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheRiverScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRiverScribe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Offering](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8164552) by [TheRiverScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRiverScribe/pseuds/TheRiverScribe). 



> If you haven't read TheRiverScribe's _Offering_ and sequels, what are you even doing with your life? Also, you will be super confused, because this will make absolutely no sense. Seriously, go read those first. Then come back and read this. Here, I'll even put a link: [Click me. I'm everything you never knew you wanted. ](http://archiveofourown.org/series/558469)

 

There were a lot of things that Sam didn’t like about being little again. The fact that he was _little_ again was at the very top of the column, along with being unable to fight like he had not very long ago, when he’d had larger hands and better coordination. Stupid short legs.

But there were also a lot of things he was finding he liked about it, even loved. Seeing Dean smiling, _laughing_ , and so much at ease was at the very top of the list. Number one. He hadn’t seen Dean so relaxed since they were kids, and even then it had often been a ruse that Sam was too young and inexperienced at seeing through. He had seen Dean try to fake ease a lot lately, try to pretend that he was unaffected by everything, even as they were thrust again into the middle of the world ending, struggling to try and defend from all sides.

But now, Dean ruled the kitchen with an iron fist and real laughter, arguing with Gabriel and smiling at everything as though the world were perfect. Their mom – their _mom_ – was with them, and Castiel and Gabriel. They had found a new ally – friend – in Raphael, and added Morpheus to their growing family.

Since leaving for Stanford, maybe even since before that, Sam hadn’t thought he would ever have more family than Dean, and maybe Bobby. And after losing Dean, not just the first time but every time after, Sam had thought he would be alone. Not even Bobby, when he was still alive, had been enough to keep him present, enough to save him from himself in a world where Dean didn’t exist.

But since he had been turned into a child again, since becoming a freaking _angel_ , their family just seemed to grow. And while nothing would ever replace Dean’s laughter as number one on his list of things he was grateful for after all these changes, having a family again was so very close behind it.

Sometimes, he still couldn’t even believe this was his life. He kept expecting to wake up and realize it had all been a dream, had to keep convincing himself that it was real, that he was here.

Sam padded down the hall. Dean had tried to put him in footie pajamas that morning and Sam had kicked him in the ribs until he’d put him down and let him dress himself. Mary had declared Christmas Eve as much of a pajama holiday as Christmas Day would be, so Sam was wearing bright red pajamas with little white fluffy dogs all over them that looked like Morpheus. Mary had found them at the store one day and brought them home for him, after which Dean had laughed until she said there was a polka-dotted pair she’d thought would suit him very well.

Despite Dean’s teasing, they had become his favorite pair of pajamas, and not just because the little dogs looked like Morpheus in his smaller form. They were incredibly soft and comfortable, and when he’d put them on, the look on his mom’s face had been perfect. It was still new, having her around, but he didn’t think he was ever going to get tired of her smiling at him. It was even better when Morpheus had taken to sniffing the little white dogs and hearing her laughter, up until he had dug his nose into Sam’s ribs and sent him into peals of uncontrollable giggling. Mary had swooped in and rescued him. Eventually.

Sam had been watching as his mother directed Cas and Raphael through decorating. That had originally been Raphael and Gabriel’s job, but once again they had been thwarted by “artistic differences,” which really meant that Gabriel had decided to instigate a glitter-bomb war. Cas had fled the library for the kitchen, where Mary and Dean had been cooking together, and pleaded for mercy, after which Mary had taken over the decorating. Gabriel had been banished to the kitchen, where Sam could occasionally hear the two of them argument. Or, more frequently, Dean yelling and Gabriel laughing.

Sam had been trying to read one of the books that Raphael had brought him from Heaven, but it grew increasingly difficult to focus on the words until he had been forced to put the book down. When he’d woken up that morning, there had been a weird feeling under his skin, like an itch that he could ignore easily enough, and he’d done so, pushing it to the back of his mind. But as the day went on, it became harder and harder to ignore. The itch became a low hum, like a song he couldn’t quite hear, that grew increasingly louder as the hours ticked by, and even more intrusive as he tried to focus on other things. It had been fine for a while, but Sam hadn’t been able to concentrate on his book, the humming too loud in his mind. He’d finally given up.

There were a lot of things that had changed when he’d been regressed into a child, but his curiosity was apparently not one of them. He had always been curious. His need for answers had been a constant irritation to his father. There was a reason he hadn’t known what his mother looked like until he was eight. John hadn’t liked to hear any questions unless they were helping him with his latest hunt, and even less so questions that referred to the time before, when they had still been a family. The time that Sam couldn’t remember and it seemed, sometimes, that he had never really been a part of.

But being unable to ask his father questions hadn’t stopped the innate curiosity. Instead, he’d asked Dean, and when Dean couldn’t or wouldn’t answer them, Sam went looking for answers elsewhere. He’d ended up with more scrapes and bruises from his search for answers than anything else prior to his joining in on hunts. Once he’d learned to read well enough on his own and learned that every town they stayed in generally had a public library, he traded in bruises for dust and scrapes for papercuts. He learned how to research as he answered his own questions, and then learned how to use those skills to help on hunts in a way his small form hadn’t allowed him to do physically.

But there was a downside to finding his answers. He hadn’t satiated his curiosity, only fueled it more. Suddenly, he wanted answers to more questions than just those about creatures and hunting. He wanted to learn all he could, about everything, about the world that the people around him lived – those that had no knowledge of the supernatural. His need to know continued as he grew, and the lack of understanding from his father fueled a bitterness even his love for his family couldn’t ease. He’d left for Stanford for more reasons than just his desire for _normalcy_. Books could only teach so much, of course, but he’d also needed to know, for certain, which of them were blind – those who lived their lives unaware of the creatures in the dark, or those who lived outside of the normal. There had to be more to life than killing, hadn’t there? Or was his father right in thinking that nothing was more important than the next job, the next hunt?

Maybe it didn’t matter. Regardless of what he tried, the hunt always drew Sam back in. Maybe it was impossible to be normal once you had been a hunter. Or maybe that’s just because he was Sam Winchester. He shook his head to shake off the other names that tried to follow that. Lucifer’s vessel. The boy with the demon blood. So many names that whispered of so many ways he had messed up, had hurt the people he cared about.

He forced the thoughts away, for the moment grateful for the humming that so easily slid to the fore of his thoughts. It was like a half-murmured song, loud enough to distract but not for him to understand, and he wanted to understand it. That curiosity again, perhaps even worse than it had been before, because now there was a whole new side of the world to see. He had senses now that he’d never had before, and if he looked as things a certain way, they were so different from the way they had appeared under a human’s gaze. This was surely no exception. A low humming song he thought he might be able to hear the words to if he could just tell where it was coming from, and a tug on his skin that told him to _come, come along, come here and find me_ that he couldn’t help but to follow. If he opened his eyes a certain way, he could see the angels beyond the vessels they wore in a way that would have destroyed him as a human. He didn’t know how he was opening his ears, but clearly he was, because he’d never heard this song before Chuck changed him. And it was a beautiful song. He wanted to listen to it more and more, find its source and hold it in his hands and never let it go.

He’d thought about asking Cas if he could hear the humming, but the angel had been changing the color of the lights he was hanging with Mary laughing as Cas continued to get the colors wrong.

_“Those ones you have should be blue, Castiel.”_

_“Hm?” The angel waved his hand and the tiny bulbs on the string of lights changed colors._

_“That’s… um… that’s lovely, Cas, but I don’t think pink really fits with the holiday.”_

_“I see,” Castiel said, the confused expression on his face suggested that he, in fact, did_ not _see, and the lights changed color again._

_“I…” Mary stared at the lights for a long moment. “What color is that exactly?”_

_“Blue?” Castiel asked, tilting his head to the side._

_“Nooo,” she said slowly. “That’s not blue. I’m not even sure what that… are those fish?”_

If Sam hadn’t known Cas for as long as he had, he might have suspected the angel was as confused as he appeared, but there was a light Sam recognized in his eyes as being a softer version of Gabriel’s vibrant, shining amusement, and he knew the angel was teasing his mother on purpose.

Sam hadn’t wanted to interrupt what was clearly a moment of bonding between the two, Castiel’s eyes filled with laughter as his mother’s filled with amused suspicion as she continued to tell Cas that, no, that color was _not_ blue, but go on and try again. Raphael with a soft smile on his face as he pretended to be trying to find the perfect spot to hang the lights so it was _just so_.

He could hear Gabriel laughing from the kitchen, interspersed with Dean’s furious shouts about pie crust and keeping fingers off, and Sam had instead decided to go have a look at whatever he could hear humming in the back of his mind. After all, the angels hadn’t said anything about it but they surely must have also heard it, a song in the back of their mind, and must have ignored it because their senses were not new to them. They might have not even realized that Sam had opened his hearing and thought that the song was still muted to him, but he could hear it, and he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to know what it was.

So he padded barefoot down the hall, idly wishing that Morpheus was there with him. The dog had seemed to find an empty spot just his size in their family and slipped in like a missing puzzle piece Sam hadn’t known they’d needed. The little (sometimes big) dog had wanted to go visit Hecate in her sanctuary but had been reluctant at the thought of leaving, It had taken Sam two days to convince the dog to go. His mother was here with them this Christmas, for the first Christmas since before Sam could remember. It wouldn’t be fair if Sam got to have Mary, only to keep Morpheus away from his mom.

He’d only be gone a few hours, Morpheus had promised, and really it hadn’t been an hour since he had left, but Sam found he was missing the little dog already. He wished he was here so Sam would have someone to investigate the source of this strange song with him. He wondered if Morpheus would have been able to hear it.

It was so strange to be spending Christmas with so many people. It was like having a family. It wasn’t the normal one that Sam had always thought he’d wanted while growing up, but he thought it might be even better than anything he could have imagined for himself. He tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that was whispering about how much it would hurt when it stopped. When everyone got bored and went away.

His thoughts might have continued in that vein if Sam hadn’t been startled by nearly walking into a door, so preoccupied was he with his thoughts. He shook off the morose thoughts, forcing himself to not think about it, and opened the door. As he stepped into the room, he realized it was one that he and Dean had been in only twice before, and had probably been avoiding unconsciously since.

He and Dean had done a cursory investigation of all the rooms upon their arrival at the bunker, the same way they checked over a hotel room to make sure nothing was going to attack them unexpectedly when they had their guard down. Sam remembered this one because the two of them had argued about whether they needed to take the time to go through everything that was in it right then and there. They’d been busy with a hunt at the time and their attention really would be better spent elsewhere, but the room was so full of junk and knick-knacks that it was impossible to tell whether there was any sort of order or if everything was tossed haphazardly about like a gigantic junk-drawer.

In the end, they had done a very brief investigation for safety purposes, but nothing had come up as dangerous and they had put the job of actually identifying and sorting everything off for another day (a day which obviously hadn’t come yet). The room was still a mess, with wooden countertops covered in bits and bobs of all sorts – nails, screws, wood shavings, rocks, a few necklace chains. It honestly looked like the workroom for a jeweler who moonlighted as a carpenter, the counters and drawers beneath them handmade and well-worn.

Sam didn’t really expect to find anything of interest in the room. They hadn’t the first time, after all. But there was still a low humming tune in the back of his mind and as he moved into the room, he found himself drawn to the lower drawer of one of the counters. The door stuck as he opened it and only tugging on it harshly a few times had it sliding open with a reluctant squeal. It was filled with folded handkerchiefs and yellowed scraps of paper on which an untidy hand had scrawled what might have been runes… or doodles… or maybe there was an uncapped pen loose in the drawer somewhere.

He grabbed the edge of what he’d thought was a handkerchief only to realize it was the corner of a small bag when something tumbled out of the opening with a clatter.

It was… it looked like a stone, sort of. Oval-shaped, with odd holes at various points across it. It was polished black but had an odd shine to it, glittering light stars in a pitch sky, or eyes out of the dark. The shape reminded Sam of something, though he couldn’t place what it was. He took a step back from the open drawer, a thought in his mind to turn and leave the room, to run, to get away—

_Hello_

His mouth was desert-dry when he opened it, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

_You came_

Cas’s name caught in his throat when he tried to call out and his lips only trembled on a whimper he couldn’t voice. The odd shine of the stone had shifted, expanding into a mist that swirled about the stone, like a cloud. Sam tried to call out for Raphael but he was equally muted by terror. He wanted—

He wanted to pick it up, he realized. He wanted to pick up the stone.

He wanted to hold it in his hand. It was the perfect size, after all.

The perfect size just for him.

_You found me_

Sam choked on the dryness of his throat, felt the tears as they rolled down his cheeks, felt the burning in his head as something, some _thing_ dug dirty fingers into his mind and whispered

_Pick me up_

It was like it was made for him. Like it had been waiting for him. Like it had been waiting for

_Pick me up_

so long and he needed to pick it up. It had been waiting.

_Pick me up_

It had been waiting just for him.

_Samuel_

It was made just for him.

_Sam_

It was for him.

_Pick me up_

It was his.

_Pick_

But…

_Me_

No…

_Up_

Please no.

_Sammy._

_Pick me up._

Sam let out single, strangled sob that died the moment it tumbled off his lips.

He picked up the stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Ohrwurm" is a German word that translates to "earworm," a song that gets stuck in one's head.
> 
> Moodboard cover art was done by the amazing NathyFaith.


	2. Vastbijten In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a volume somewhere of the Oxford English Dictionary where Dean Winchester's picture is included under the word Stubborn.

Gabriel had no fucking idea how to make a proper pie. Dean had been forced to threaten him with a whisk to the hair if he didn’t stop trying to completely ruin the apple pie Dean was making for Christmas. Gabriel had only laughed and, at Castiel’s pleading bitchface (he totally learned that from Sam), let Dean handle the pie while he returned to chopping up vegetables, a smirk still on his face. Dean had to admit, the archangel knew how to rile him, but at least he also knew a few good recipes.

Just not for _pie_.

“I’m telling you, Deano, if you’d just taste it when I’m finished, you’d change your tune.”

“Not happening,” Dean growled, pinching the edge of the dough between his fingers as he turned the pie pan in front of him. This would set overnight and then he could make the filling the following day, and he had no intention of letting Gabe mess it up. He squinted at the archangel as he pushed the finished pie crust to the left and away from him. Gabriel laughed loudly and snapped his fingers, a candy cane striped in every color imaginable popping into his fingers. He stuffed the end of it into his mouth and grinned at Dean around it.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think—”

# “DEAN!”

Dean was out of the kitchen before the pie he had been working had even hit the floor. He barely heard the sharp sound of wings behind him as Gabriel flew from the kitchen. His feet pounded down the hall as the sound of his name echoed in his ears.

_Where is he? Where’s Sammy?_

His mind screamed possibilities at him. The library, the garage, the armory, the roof, outside, in danger, Hell, he was in Hell he was being dragged back into the Cage he was—

_Keep-on mov-ing_

_Keep-on mov-ing_

Even fast, his heart beat a steady rhythm and he forced himself to focus on it, to breathe with it, to keep moving, to not panic. It was just like another job. Just another hunt. He knew how to work a hunt.

_Sammy!_

He knew how to stay calm on a hunt.

_Sam! Where are you, Sam?_

His fingers itched for his gun but he kept moving, racing past rooms where he knew his brother wasn’t. Couldn’t have said how he knew, if asked. Later, wouldn’t remember that he had ignored every door as though it didn’t exist, following that beat of his heart and the thrum of something inside him that told him to run, that Sam wasn’t here, that Dean needed to

_Keep-on mov-ing_

_Keep-on mov-ing_

There was the rapid flutter of wings and Gabriel appeared down the hall. A part of Dean made a mental note that it had obviously only been seconds since he’d heard Sam scream, as fast as the angels could travel from one point to the next, but the rest of him could only focus on the sound his name had made against the walls of the bunker as Sam screamed it like he was dying. Like he was _dying_.

He opened his mouth to yell for Gabe, to ask him where Sam was or what was going on or if he was okay – he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. He couldn’t unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

But then there was a hand on his shoulder, a familiar burning touch right over the handprint there, and the disorientation of his feet leaving the ground as he was carried across an expanse of _nowehere_ in less than the stroke of a second. His feet hit the ground and he staggered forward, his momentum demanding he keep running even as that thrumming call within him whispered _Sam Sam Sam Sam_ , as though nothing else mattered so long as he was _here here here here_. 

Vertigo demanded his attention, but there was a hand still on his shoulder that steadied his balance and his heart, even as his eyes automatically catalogued his surroundings. He didn’t need to look behind him, knowing it was Cas at his back. His eyes took in the forms of Gabriel and Raphael, both of them staring at the door that Cas had flown him to. It was _shimmering_ , gleaming like oil under sunlight, a myriad of colors that wouldn’t hold still.

“What the fuck is that?” Dean barked out, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth. He heard pounding feet behind him and spun around, only to catch sight of his mom racing down the hall, her eyes wide and face white with panic.

“Wards,” Gabriel said. His voice was distant and blank, so unlike him that Dean actually whipped around to stare at him, fearing he’d see the bland look that had so often been on the angels’ faces – that uncaring, inhuman facial expression.

Gabriel’s eyes were glowing, squinted as he stared at the door, but his jaw was clenched tight. Dean could see the tense line of his shoulders and it made him ridiculously grateful that Gabe didn’t hide that. He didn’t know if he could have taken it, seeing that look of blank uncaring on the normally vibrant angel’s face.

“What do you mean wards?” He looked back at the door. “Can’t you just fly through?”

“No. Well, yes, but I’d probably kill Sam and myself doing it, so it’s not an option.” He looked at Raphael and it was clear the two were communicating without speaking. “If we can unwind them…”

# “DEEEEAAAAN!”

“Sammy!” Dean leapt at the door, pure instinct throwing him forward more than any strength of his own limbs. When his hand slid away from the doorknob as though along a pane of glass, he slammed his fist against the door so hard he felt the bone in his little finger crack. He yelled something incoherent, his own fury coming out in a voiceless rage. He wished it was a cry for help he was hearing from Sam but he knew his brother’s every tone of voice. It wasn’t even fear he was hearing. It was pain. Just pain.

Someone was hurting his brother.

Someone was going to wish they were _dead_.

“Sam appears to be trapped within as much as we are trapped without.”

The words were so obvious, they made Dean clench his teeth. He turned his head and glared back at Cas but he could see the strain on the angel’s face, the line between his eyebrows. He was staring at the door but he met Dean’s eyes when the man looked at him, filled with the desire to do something but not knowing what would help. Cas was as worried as he was about Sam.

“What’s happening to him!” Dean spun back around and slammed his fist against the door. It didn’t move. It didn’t even rock in its frame.

Gabe shook his head but it was Raphael who answered. “The wards are preventing us from seeing inside the room. We are attempting to find a way to unravel them without causing irreparable damage.”

Whether he meant irreparable damage to the bunker or to Sam, Dean didn’t know and didn’t ask. He was afraid he knew what the answer would be.

# ”DEAN! NO! DEAN!”

“Fucking… Sammy!” Dean attacked the door, hammering at it with his fist as hard as he could and ignoring the pain in his hand. “Sammy, talk to me, damnit!”

Sam didn’t answer. He just screamed Dean’s name again in a voice that chilled him to the core. There was a desperation there that Dean wouldn’t allow himself to recognize, even as the phantom smell of blood filled his nostrils. He could almost feel the ground beneath his knees, the limp body of his brother in his arms. He remembered a scream that tore its way out of his own throat in the shape of his brother’s name, the only sound in the world that mattered at all as he begged in his heart for things to be different, for Sam to be okay, to come back, come back, please, God, please.

He choked on bile as Sam screamed a high, loud shriek of terror and felt the bones in his hand move unnaturally as he punched the door as hard as he could again and again and again—

## “Please, please, no! Cas, please! Cas!”

Dean heard the sharp inhale behind him and kicked the door as hard as he could. Pain ricocheted up his foot and he screamed in rage at the shimmering light of the door. “SAMMY!”

## “Moooom!”

Sam wailed behind the door and Dean bit back a string of expletives as he heard his mom choke on a sob behind him. He stepped back, prepared to ram the door open with his shoulder, when a hand grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him backward.

“The fuck!” He took a swing at Gabriel, who simply shoved him into Cas, who caught him under the shoulders before he could fall. “Gabriel, you fucking bastard! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Stay back!” Gabriel snarled with such ferocity that Dean went perfectly still, pure animal instinct freezing him in place at the fury that burned in bright gold eyes. The archangel’s top lip was curled back from his teeth in a snarl that reminded Dean of a dog. No, a wolf. There was more than murder in those golden eyes and as he watched, Gabriel’s archangel blade slid into his hand, his fingers wrapping white around it. He turned to face the door, every muscle in his body taut.

“Brother,” Raphael said quietly, a note of warning in his voice. Wariness, perhaps. Concern.

“No,” Gabriel said in a voice like a storm, and slammed his archangel blade through the door clear to the hilt.

Something flickered out, vanished. Like a low buzz that Dean had never noticed was there until it was gone. For a moment, there was nothing, a void of sound, frozen in a moment he would never forget. His mother, her hands pressed over her mouth, tears making her eyes seem huge and bright. Raphael, face stoic even as his eyes burned with power, deep brown glowing with the red of clay, the slate grey of stone. Gabriel, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his sword, swung overhead and buried into the door, lines of gold like stardust forming cracks in the shining oil-slick of the door. Castiel at his back, hands pressed to the outside of either arm, more for comfort than balance – a silent _I am here_.

There was a quiet cracking sound, only audible for their silence, and the lines of gleaming stardust – _grace_ , Dean’s mind whispered in reverent disbelief – cutting spiderwebs through the shimmer of the wards turned black like coal.

Gabriel said something in Enochian, but Dean knew a swear word when he heard one.

He had just a moment to witness Raphael lunge forward and grab hold of his mother before Castiel yanked him around and slammed Dean’s face into his chest with enough force to bruise.

“Cas!” he yelled, muffled against the fabric of the angel’s trenchcoat. “What the fuck are you—”

Even with his face buried against the angel’s chest, Dean could see the light.

He slammed his eyes shut instinctively and pressed his face harder against Cas’s chest as a sound like thunder shook the building around them. He could feel Cas’s hand against the back of his head, fingers digging into his hair, as the light burned even through his eyelids. Something tore past him, tearing at his sleeve as it blew by, and somewhere, Dean could hear someone – _Sam?_ – screaming.

And then it was gone.

Dean tried to pull away but Cas’s hand had him pinned. He exhaled a long breath against the fabric of the trenchcoat, let the line of each of Cas’s fingers against his skull soothe him, before he reached up and grasped the wrist of Cas’s other hand, where it was pressed firmly against his shoulder.

He squeezed Cas’s wrist gently and felt the angel’s exhale against his hair, noting at a distance that there seemed to be a disconnect in his hearing, a muffling to sounds that were normally loud. The hand on the back of his head moved down, smoothing across his neck and then falling away. Dean pulled back, giving his wrist another squeeze, and then turned around.

His mouth worked soundlessly.

Mary was pulling carefully away from where she had been shielded from the blast by Raphael. They were both covered in dust, their clothes and hair white with it. Raphael turned his head sharply and Dean followed his gaze.

The wall had been blown apart, the dry wall turned to dust and paper against the force that had struck it. Gabriel lay in a pile of shattered beams and rubble, his clothes and face covered in drywall dust. There was no movement from the archangel, suggesting that the sudden explosion of light had been his grace as it was expelled from his vessel. He heard his mom gasp from that muffling distance, had a thought to tell her that it was all right, that it was just his vessel and Gabriel was surely all right. He had to be all right.

But then he turned around and saw Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word _Vastbijten in_ is Dutch and translates as "to sink one's teeth into." It means that one will discover a problem and attack it with all their focus, refusing to give up until they have succeeded.


	3. Ya’arburnee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is someone else in the room with Sam. Someone who wants to make a deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is eleven pages of pain. There's also a good bit of violence and some disturbing descriptions. Just a heads-up to everyone so you're not blindsided. There was a reason Sam was screaming like he was. 
> 
> Also, the note at the end of the chapter will explain the title again, of course, as well as a few fun points of information pertaining to what's happening in the chapter. Yay for learning!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who is reading and you awesome people hitting the kudos button and commenting. You make my life.

The stone was cold. Not cool like a rock that had been buried in snow, but icy, like the dead heart of a star, but where it bit at his skin, it burned. Sam wanted to drop it, wanted to throw it away, but couldn’t make his fingers unclench from around it. He bit back a scream at what was surely fire burning its way down to bone, grabbing his wrist with his free hand to try and make himself drop the stone before it ate him all the way through and left nothing behind.

“My, this is a predicament.”

Sam spun around, stumbling backward until his head smacked on the edge of one of the counters. There was a man in the room, not one that he had seen before, but that didn’t mean much when both angels and demons could just pull on a new body like a change of pants.

“So rude, Sammy,” the man said, pursing his lips mockingly. “You don’t think much of us, do you?”

“Depends which one you are,” Sam gasped back. The stone was still burning his palm and he was still trying to let go of it, peel his fingers off, but the majority of his attention was on the man.

“Ooh, now that’s a fun question. Really, depends on _when_ you’re asking.” The man flashed him a grin that made Sam flinch away. It was too wide, with too many teeth, and though the canines in the man’s mouth weren’t so long they appeared inhuman, he still got the sense of something bestial from the smile. “Of course, I love it when you guess, you see. Humans, that is. Well. Once-humans, in your case, little _fledgling_.” He chuckled a low, dark laugh, more like a growl than anything humorous, and the hungry look in his gaze made Sam feel small.

“Guess?” he said, or tried to. It came out in a small voice, a squeak, and he tried not to tremble as the man smiled.

“Well.” The man raised his hands up in a “what do you think” pose, spinning around in a slow circle to let Sam see all of him. “You’re the smart one of the… the _flock_ , aren’t you, Sammy? What do you know?”

It sounded so casual, such an easy turn of phrase, but there was danger in the smile and a cruel lie in his tone. Sam swallowed, forced himself to ignore the burning, to focus on the… man.

He was tall – taller than both Cas and Dean. Not as stocky as Sam’s brother, but by no means wiry. His face was narrow; high cheekbones and deep-set eyes giving him a handsome look under thick, tawny hair. His eyes were yellow. Not that sunlit whiskey that so often gleamed in Gabriel’s eyes when he was laughing, born half of his vessel and half of grace, but a low, sick yellow, like pus and urine, shining out of a face that might otherwise have been beautiful.

There was a familiarity in that face that Sam couldn’t put together. Something screaming out of the way the bones in his face were angled that looked _known_ , but he couldn’t think of it, or perhaps didn’t want to, as his eyes slid away and took in the clothes. They were… overdone. The suit jacket was red velvet, the lapels and cuffs black, embroidered with extravagant designs. Sleek black pants and stylish, exquisitely-shined boots. His fingers bore rings of shining silver, rubies and emeralds peered at him like eyes out of the dark. The whole outfit probably cost more than the limit on one of his and Dean’s fake credit cards.

Sam lifted his head back to the man’s face, finding those putrid yellow eyes staring at him, the lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. Sam’s mind shied away from the way the man’s hair fell, tumbled carelessly around his face, the shape of the nose, the angle of the eyebrows. The eyes were wrong, and the clothes, but everything else seemed too… too…

The man gave a low chuckle and moved to the right, long steps moving to circle around Sam, who ducked away, retreated to keep distance from the man. “Did your brain get regressed too, Sammy-boy? I seem to recall you being smarter than this. Quicker on the up-take.” He flashed that wolfish grin again. “Let’s give little Sammy a hint.”

He stopped walking, facing Sam who kept his back to one of the cupboards. He had stopped noticing the burn in his hand, attention focused on the man that very likely wasn’t a man in front of him.

“I am coins jangling in pockets put there by quick fingers. I’m the want that curls in the belly of a man sitting on a throne. I’m a purse clutched tightly when a charity draws near and the shine in the eye of a coveted gem. I am the fall of Babylon. I am the chains that jangle on those who died with pockets filled… and hearts empty.”

Sam’s face had gone pale, his whole body cold like he’d been swimming in winter. After all the research he had done over the years, and beyond that, his devotional study of the Bible, his prayers, his attempts to be good, to be right, he knew names. He knew hundreds of names. Thousands. Mary and Joseph and Jesus and Cain and Abel and Peter and Paul and Matthew and Judas and Gabriel and Castiel and Raphael and Michael and Lucifer. Lucifer, fallen angel, leader of the rebellion against Heaven, Devil in the Pit, Adversary and Enemy and one, only one, of many.

There was a verse he had turned to while in Stanford, when the nights were long and cold, when he was hungry and he ached for the sound of someone else in the room, another body breathing to tell him that he was not as alone as he felt. When the thought of easing his way seemed like such a small evil. Just one little credit card scam, just a small one, so he could pay for groceries without having to work a full-time job on top of classes. Enough to pay for proper heating, or at least for cough medicine. Enough to keep him going so he wouldn’t falter, wouldn’t turn around and go back to the life he’d been living before, trying to survive under the constant burning scrutiny of his father, whose dislike of questions and dislike of _Sam_ seemed to grow every day. Without thought, his lips moved, mumbling the verse like a prayer. Like he was there again, back in the dark of 2 AM, staring out at the rain, the taste of cereal in his mouth and his thoughts on his brother.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and…”

He inhaled sharply and looked up into yellow eyes. Yellow like pyrite.

“Say it,” the creature growled.

“Mammon,” Sam whispered.

Mammon the demon. Mammon the personification of Greed. Mammon the Prince of Hell.

The demon’s eyes flashed pitch black, that tell-tale sign of possession, and he gave a graceful, mocking bow. “My reputation precedes me. Hello, Sam.”

“What do you want?” Sam snapped. He was shaking. He was physically quivering. How had a demon gotten in here? How had a Prince of Hell slipped by the angels? What did he _want_?

“Aw, now don’t be like that. I’m here to _help_ you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Ah-ah-ah, rude.” The demon waggled his finger at Sam like a scolding parent. “Really, now, and I’m being so nice, coming to you before your brother’s deal is up to give you a chance to fix it.”

His brother’s…

“What deal?” Something cold settled in Sam’s stomach and he felt his knees wobble beneath him. Dean had made a deal? Why? What for?

“Oh, he didn’t tell you. That’s not nice, is it? I do so hate to be the one to break bad news…”

“WHAT DEAL?!”

Those yellow eyes slid to him, snake’s eyes, and a smile bared the demon’s teeth. “Why, a trade, Sammy. Just a trade. Dean’s soul… for your humanity.”

“My…”

“Your humanity. Of course.” The demon’s face softened into a perplexed look Sam _knew_ was a lie. He _knew_ it was, but it still hurt to see it. “You didn’t think… you didn’t actually think he was okay with this, did you? Really, Sam… you’re not human anymore.”

“No, no… Dean said… he said…” But what had he said? Sam couldn’t seem to focus, couldn’t remember… where was that near-perfect recall Cas had mentioned? _… if my options are a tiny angel brother or a dead human brother…_

It had been that he would take Sam as he was. Sam knew it had been that, but he couldn’t remember the exact words. He couldn’t remember…

“Oh, Sam,” the demon said sadly. “Sam, you know your brother lies. He always lies.”

“No he doesn’t!”

Oh, but he did. Dean lied. Dean was so good at lying, sometimes he could even fool Sam.

 _I know my brother,_ he told himself. _I know him. I know Dean and I know he loves me._

But there was that pitying look on the demon’s face, that look that said _Oh, you poor thing_ , like Sam really was as young and naïve as he looked. Dean… Dean had gone to Hell for him once, even with Sam’s weird visions and their father’s words between them. Dean hadn’t just died. He’d gone to Hell.

_And he’s going again_

_Because of you_

A deal. Dean had made a deal. He’d made a deal with a Prince of Hell. “For my humanity,” Sam whispered. But why? If it bothered him so much, why not just leave? Why not kick Sam out of the bunker, cut ties?

_He’s not doing it for him_

_He’s trying to save you_

_Trying to save you again_

_Even after you said Yes_

But this was different. This was… it wasn’t the same and it couldn’t end the same way, not again. Dean was _not_ going to spend forty years in Hell because of Sam. He was _not_.

“No.”

Mammon raised his eyebrows. “No?”

“No,” Sam growled firmly. “Dean is not going to Hell.”

The demon made a sound of understanding. “Well, it’s good to hear you say that, Sammy, because that’s why I’m here.” He started to pace, nonchalantly playing with the cuff of his jacket and not looking at Sam. “I honestly have no interest in _The Righteous Man_.” He said the name with a mocking flourish of his hand. “Your brother has spent time in Hell already and really, repetition… is… dull. So, I’m here to make a trade. Dean’s willing to give up his soul for you, same old shtick, etc, etc, ad infinitum.” He flapped his hand. “I don’t want Dean’s soul, but you know your brother. He doesn’t know how to do a proper trade unless he’s the goods. But you, Sam, you’re smart.” The demon finally turned its gaze on him. “So if I say I’ve got Dean’s soul in a contract and I’m willing to trade it for something else…”

“You want me to offer up something else in exchange for it.”

“See?” Mammon grinned at him. “Smart. That’s why I like you, Sam. So… what’d’ya wanna trade?”

Sam stared at the demon for a moment, wondering if he was stupid.

“Ah yes. I should mention… _my humanity_ is not an acceptable answer.”

Sam flinched. That’s what he had been planning to offer. Just nix the deal completely. He should have known it wouldn’t work.

“No, I require something else.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“Of course you do! You’ve got a whole bunker full of things here. Knick-knacks, weapons, _angels_ …”

Sam frowned at him. “They’re not mine.”

“Aren’t they? Weren’t they given to you? Gabriel was brought back specifically for you, was he not?  Castiel, well, he may have meant for you but it’s clear he’s only interested in your brother.”

“That’s not true!”

The demon kept talking as though Sam hadn’t spoken. “But they’re your flock, aren’t they? When it comes to _angels_ , that makes them yours. Really, Sammy, so much power in that little body of yours. Didn’t you know you only have to reach out and take what you want?” He turned around, walking over to a counter and casually picking up items to inspect. “So when I say I want to trade something for your brother’s soul, what I really mean, of course, is some _one_.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who it is doesn’t matter to me. I only thought I would be nice and offer.” He tilted his head to the side, still faced away from Sam. “But you may want to hurry. It wasn’t a long deal that I made, and in a few minutes… it won’t matter.”

It won’t…

In the distance, he heard the sound of dogs barking.

No.

Oh god, no.

Dean.

##  **“DEAN!”**

The demon turned and looked at him, eyebrows raised. He cleared his throat, then stuck his little finger in his ears and wiggled it around. “You have quite the set of lungs on you, Sammy-boy.”

“Where is Dean?”

“Right here, Sammy.”

Sammy whipped around and there was his brother, looking perfectly healthy, his shirt dusted with flour from rolling dough for pie. Sam rushed forward and threw himself at Dean, who crouched down to catch him. Sam was already babbling, demanding answers, his words tumbling over one another and tangling across his tongue. He wasn’t sure whether he was speaking English or Enochian, but he could barely understand himself through his tears.

“Dude, what’s with the waterworks?” He gripped Sam’s shoulders and pushed him back far enough that they could see each other’s faces. “Chill out, man.”

“Dean! Dean, you didn’t… you…”

Then, to his horror, Dean looked over at the demon and sighed. “Already that time, huh?”

“I did tell you it wouldn’t be long.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean pushed himself to his feet.

“Dean.” Sam was shaking his head, hands grasping at Dean’s pantlegs, his shirt, reaching for his wrists. “Dean, no.”

“Come on, Sammy, you had to know this was coming.”

Sam continued shaking his head. “No. You said…”

“Yeah, I know what I said, dude. I said I’d try not to trip over you.”

That was it. That was right. _“I mean, if my options are a tiny angel brother or a dead human brother, I'll take my chances and try not to trip over you.”_

“But dude, that was before I realized that you’re gonna be this little forever. I mean, I’ll be long dead and you’re still gonna look like your six. That’s no life, Sammy. You really wanna be a six-year-old forever? And what happens when Gabe gets bored and Raphael drags Cas back to keep fixing Heaven? You get put in foster care? Forever?”

Sam was shaking his head, tears running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin, but he couldn’t speak. Dean kept talking anyway. “I can’t do that to you, Sam. If it means I go to Hell, then fine, I’ll go, but you’re not going to be alone forever. I won’t let them leave you like that.”

“B’t… you’ll b’leaving me,” Sam choked out.

Dean was obviously trying to choke back his own tears. “I know, man, I… I wish there was another way.”

“There is,” Mammon interjected. “I was telling Sam here that I’m willing to offer him a trade. You can keep your soul, Dean, and Sam can get his humanity back. I just need… someone else.”

“No,” Dean said immediately, standing straight and glaring at the demon. “No fucking way. I said _my_ soul and that’s all I’m trading. No one else. Just me.”

Before he could stop himself, before he could even think about whether or not he was going to say anything, Sam whispered, “But…”

Dean whirled on him. “Are you fucking serious, Sam? You want to trade someone else’s _soul_?”

“You’re trading yours!” Sam screamed.

“It’s mine to trade!”

“No it’s NOT!”

For a moment, there was silence but for the sound of Sam’s harsh breathing. Then, in a quiet voice as sharp as a knife, Dean asked, “Then whose is it, Sam? Is it yours? Do I _belong_ to you? How does that work exactly? Because the last time I checked, humans’ve got maybe a hundred years, and hunters less. So I might make seventy, Sam, if I’m fucking lucky, but after that, I’m gone. Then what? What good’s us being soulmates gonna do when you’re gonna live for millions of years? Even if you do die, Sam, we don’t get to share a heaven anymore, because Heaven is for humans, and you’re _not_!”

Sam sucked in a breath that hurt his throat, but before he could say anything, Dean turned to Mammon. “Just do your thing, demon. I’m done. Snap your fingers or sign your name or whatever the fuck you need to do. It’s my soul that’s going, so bring it on.”

“NO!” Sam screamed, but Mammon gave him a sad smile as he raised his hand. “Sorry, Sammy, but he’s right. Dealer’s choice.” And he snapped his fingers.

The howls that had been distant broke out in a cacophony at his back and Sam spun just in time to see the massive, sinewy forms burst into the room and leap for his brother, three of them, howling death knells.   

##  **“DEEEEAAAAN!”**

Sam screamed, lunging forward, but a massive paw kicked him in the chest and threw him back, knocking him to the floor. Dean screamed and Sam could hear the hellhounds, their claws tearing, their teeth ripping into his flesh.

“STOP IT!” he screamed at Mammon. “Stop it! DEAN!”

The demon opened his arms in a gesture of powerlessness. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“NO!” Sam screamed, and he could practically feel the lightning in his fingers, a beating pulse of power that curled like static just under his skin. “No, I won’t let you!” And he threw a hand forward, thinking of all the times he had exorcised a demon and saved a human, thinking of that power that had once been in him but not been his, and now this power, which was his, which he could use to do good. He could stop a demon. He could save his brother.

Lightning erupted, not just from his hand but from everywhere. He could feel it burning through his ears, tearing off his teeth. It left tracks across his skin where it tore from every pore, and the world lit up blue-white and burned.

* * *

It took a long time for Sam to come back to himself. A long time before he could open his eyes and look at the world around him.

The room had been utterly destroyed. Lines of jagged black, like rotten branches, raced up the walls, still smoking. The doors on the cupboards had been blown off or shattered, drawers thrown open and everything scattered across the floor. The tops of the cupboards were black, flames licking still at the surface, and the whole place smelled like ozone. Like sulphur and burnt hair.

Sam didn’t want to look.

He didn’t want to.

He didn’t.

There were tears already on his cheeks, already falling, when he turned around.

_Good job, Sammy_

The hellounds lay scattered around him, their fur charred, still smoking.

_Good job_

Dean lay in the center of the room where he had been knocked to the floor. His clothes were ripped and there were a few cuts, but nothing like before. Not like with Lilith, the first time…

The hellhounds hadn’t had time.

_You saved your brother_

Dean’s eyelids were open, but there was nothing where his eyes should have been but dark, charred flesh. Still, they managed to stare up at him, burned-out eyes in an ash-grey face.

_Now his soul is safe from Hell_

_And look, you’ve smited someone_

**“No,”** Sam whispered.

_Just like a proper angel_

**“No, please.”**

He dropped to his knees next to Dean, grabbed his hands, touched his face. His skin was cold. Icy. And those empty eye-sockets stared at him, asking. Always asking. _How could you, Sammy? I loved you._

## “DEAN! NO!”

He grabbed Dean’s shirt and shook him. Even knowing it wouldn’t work, even knowing it was futile, he shook him, begging, pleading. Oh god, please, someone, please, anyone, help. Anyone. God, please, he didn’t mean to. Please!

## “DEAN!”

Bring him back! Bring him back! Sam’s grip loosened and slipped away. His arms fell to his sides. “Bring him back,” he whispered.

“Of course,” said a cheerful voice behind him, “but only if the price is right.”

“Mammon.” He didn’t move, didn’t look. Didn’t care. He heard footsteps and shortly Mammon was walking around in front of him, still impeccably dressed, looking the same as before.

“You pack a punch, Sammy-boy.”

“You did this on purpose.”

The demon chuckled. “Me? I’d love to take the credit, Sam, truly I would, but this was _aaallll_ you.” He crouched down in front of Sam. “I have to commend you, though. You’d make one hell of a Prince.” He grinned at Sam, all teeth. “But we’ll worry about you falling later. For now…”

“Give me back my brother.”

“Sure, can do.” The demon jumped back to his feet. “You have to insert your quarters before you can play the game, though, Sammy, you know that. A life for a life. A soul for a soul. And really, I gave you a chance before, equal opportunity trade, and you wouldn’t take it. Sale’s over, Sammy, sorry. I’ll need two souls now.”

“Two…” How was he even supposed to pick one, let alone two? No, he couldn’t. He thought about his little family here. He couldn’t let them go, couldn’t hurt them. He couldn’t pick one to give up, to send to Hell. Dean would never forgive him, no. Still might not, even now. But Sam would never forgive himself.

“Here, let me make it easier for you.” The demon snapped his fingers. “Let’s see, eenie, meenie, minie, moe!” He snapped his fingers.

Castiel appeared next to him in a sudden flare of wings. “Sam?” he asked, looking around the room at the destruction. “Sam, we have been trying to get to you…”

The angel trailed off as he caught sight of Dean. For a moment, he merely stared, his mouth slightly open.

“Cas,” Sam whispered hoarsely.

Castiel ignored him. He walked slowly past Sam and knelt on the ground next to Dean. His hand trembled in the air for a moment before smoothing over Dean’s forehead, brushing back his hair.

“Cas, I…”

“What happened, Sam?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t mean to. I…”

Castiel looked at him, and those blue eyes so full of pain, and then he was standing, towering over Sam, still on his knees by his brother. “Samuel. I do not understand. How could you?” Cas looked back at Dean, his eyes bright blue with tears. “Dean loved you so much. How could you do this?”

“I didn’t…” Sam choked. His eyes were burning. “I didn’t mean to, Cas. I wanted to stop him! I wanted… I wanted to save him. He was…”

But Cas was shaking his head and his features were hardening, his eyes going cold. “I thought it would work. I thought, if my father was the one who gave you Grace, who fixed your soul, he could purge it all, but I was wrong. I thought… if you were like the Nephilim, we could adjust. We could teach you better. But even my father’s wasn’t powerful enough to rid you of the demon blood. It’s still inside you. Still _tainting_ your every action.”

“Cas, no. No, it’s not. The demon bl… I haven’t had… I didn’t!” He looked at Mammon who was pale-faced and clutching his arm, like he was stemming a wound. “I didn’t…”

“It’s okay, Sam,” the demon said, that pitying look on his face. “I forgive you. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I didn’t… Cas…”

But when he looked back at Cas, he didn’t see the angel he had come to see as family. That sculpted-from-ice expression was back, the soldier’s scowl, and there was an angel blade held firmly in his hand.

“I am sorry, Sam, but I can’t save you.” His fingers tightened over the hilt of his sword. “I have no other options.”

Sam pushed himself back, feet sliding in blood as he tried to retreat, tried to back away. “No, please, I’m sorry. Cas, I’m sorry!”

“I can still save you, Sammy,” Mammon murmured from the side. “Just say the word and I’ll make him go away.”

Sam shook his head wildly. No. No, he couldn’t. Not Cas. Never Cas.

_But Dean_

_It’s for Dean_

No.

Castiel stepped forward, his eyes burning with grace, as he raised the blade.

##  **“Please, please, no!”**

Sam threw himself to the side, screaming as he felt the tip of the blade slice across his leg. He rolled into something hard and opened his eyes to see Castiel standing above him, eyes righteous blue.

##  **“Cas, please! Cas!”**

Sam screamed, throwing his hands up to defend himself, thinking desperately _Help, please, anyone! Anyone, please! Help!_  

Castiel opened his mouth in a scream, light bursting from his mouth and burning through his eyes, as a blade erupted from his chest. Those wings, black and iridescent, flashed across his vision, bright black. The drop of his body to the ground was loud, but not nearly as loud as the hissing burn of his wings as their forms seared into perfect clarity across the floor.

Sam shook his head.

No.

 “Cas?” The word came out a croak. “Cas…”

 Blood trickled from the angel’s blood and Sam felt himself shuddering. He looked up, looked around, and saw Mammon casually cleaning his angel blade. He raised an eyebrow at Sam. “Asking anyone for help? Anyone?” He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s enough of a yes to do in a pinch.”

 “You…”

 But Sam didn’t have the strength to rise, to throw himself at the demon. He felt cold. Felt frozen to the floor. Perhaps his legs were broken and that’s why he couldn’t move them?

“Well, Sammy, that’s half the price. Granted, he’s an angel and it’s not _technically_ a soul, but I did say a life for a life, didn’t I? Let’s take him… and then I’ll take a soul to make it even.” He snapped his fingers again.

He could have guessed.

 He _should_ have guessed.

 Mary appeared in the room, her eyes streaked with tears, her face white. “Sam,” she whispered and rushed to him, but Sam flinched away.

 No.

 No, he couldn’t do it again. Wasn’t it enough? Dean… Dean would never forgive him. Cas was gone. Cas was gone and it was Sam’s fault. It was all Sam’s fault, and his mom.

 “Come on, Sammy. Say the word,” Mammon teased. “Just one little word, and then you can have your brother back. It’s so easy. Just… say…”

 “NO!” Sam screamed, his voice cracking halfway through. He felt the sound echo through his head as he screamed it over and over again. **_NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_**

 “Yes.”

 Sam spun around, his neck cracking loudly as he stared at his mom. She was kneeling by Dean but her eyes were on Mammon. “You’re asking for my soul for Dean’s, right?” The demon nodded, his face a mask, eyes uncertain. “Then yes.”

 “No!” Sam scrambled to his feet, tripping twice before he managed to stagger over to her. “No, please, Mom, please stay.”

 “Oh, sweetie.” Mary dropped to her knees in front of him. “Baby, you have to know I’d do anything for you. Anything.”

 “Then stay.”

 She shook her head. “Sam…” She reached out a hand and brushed back his hair, smoothing her fingers through curly locks. “I gave you up once. I didn’t mean to but I did, and you went through literal Hell for it. I can never pay that back. I can never make up for it.”

 “Stay. Please.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you need your brother much more than you need me.”

Sam opened his mouth, tried to say no, tried to say that wasn’t true, it _wasn’t_.

“Honey, we both know who raised you. We both know who was there for you for your whole life, making sure you were okay, that you were fed and safe, and that wasn’t me and it wasn’t your father. It was your brother.” She gave him a sad smile. “And that’s okay. I’ll be okay, so long as you’re safe.”

Sam couldn’t talk. He could barely breathe. He could only stare as Mary stood up, still watching him, still with that soft, sad smile on her face.

**_No, please, no._ **

**_Please._ **

Mammon’s face peered over her shoulder, his smile wide, baring every sharp, rotted tooth out of a face that looked

just

like

Sam’s.

“No,” Sam whispered.

“Yes,” the demon growled, and drew the angel blade across Mary’s throat, sending blood spurting across the room and Sam screamed.

He screamed.                                                           

##  **“Moooom!”**

And the room erupted with grace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ya’arburnee_ is an Arabic word that is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, "may you bury me."
> 
> For those interested, Mammon’s outfit is based on this picture: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/17/78/0c/17780cb87c344561ca6b04361bedb1ae.jpg
> 
>  _Pyrite_ is the proper term for the mineral colloquially known as “fool’s gold.”
> 
> Mammon is one of the Seven Princes of Hell in both The Lantherne of Light’s and Peter Binsfeld’s classification of demons, written in 1409 and 1589, respectively. The seven princes represented each of the seven deadly sins. In total, they include:
> 
> Lucifer: Pride  
> Mammon: Greed  
> Asmodeus: Lust  
> Leviathan: Envy  
> Beelzebub: Gluttony  
> Satan: Wrath  
> Belphegor: Sloth
> 
> The Bible verse that Sam quotes is Matthew 6:19-24. I’m not sure which version of the Bible this particular translation came from, so apologies for that. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter and my little lesson on various aspects of the chapter. Leave a comment (or your dirty tissues, that works, too).


	4. Mutterseelinallein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief can stretch across fathoms, to the deepest hells and the highest heavens, and no angel is immune to the cry of a fledgling. Michael comes to investigate the trouble at the bunker and suffers his own loss and grief as a result.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to only briefly focus on Michael. And then this happened.

Heaven was busy these days. There was much work to be done in fixing what had been broken by war and neglect. Michael was blessed with efficient people, however, and once he directed them where he wished them to focus their attention, there was little need for him to interfere further. But he found himself with more to do regardless of how he delegated his work.

But they were getting there. Already, Heaven seemed better than it had when he first returned. The healers were working hard to get everyone’s wings back in order, and the general morale lifted as more angels found their grace eased by the caring touch of their brothers and sisters. Things were changing and Michael found his own ease in that. There was hope on the horizon, like a sun rising into morning.

A scream tore across Michael’s mind, biting like lightning. He heard cries across his mind, startled angels asking what was wrong, what happened, but let his own mind slide past them, reaching out.

 _“Sariel. What’s going on?”_ he demanded, rushing out of his office and into a crowd of worried angels. Flight wasn’t possible in Heaven, mostly for safety, so he had to rely on the speed of his vessel’s legs as he ran toward the exit. He was forced to dodge around angels, many of them frozen in place in shock or with their hands clapped over their ears in a futile attempt to quiet the echoing cry that rang across their minds.

_“I do not know. We are trying to get into the bunker to check on Gabriel’s flock but there are wards preventing us from entering.”_

Michael grimaced, sent a thought out to one of his lieutenants to keep the other angels in Heaven, that he would be going to investigate personally, and threw himself out of the exit. The moment his vessel left Heaven, he let his grace rush outward, six wings flashing like flames at his back, and he was gone.

 _“Michael, these wards are not like anything that I have seen before.”_ Sariel’s voice in his mind was sharp with worry, the edge cold like steel. She never did like when something prevented her from doing her job.

 _“Do you believe that they were put in place by the Winchesters?”_ He knew they didn't trust him. Dean Winchester had made himself perfectly clear and the fledgling's terror had spoken for itself, but would they place wards up to prevent any of the angels from entering the bunker, even the Angel Guard? Or were they defending against something else, something Michael and the others were not prepared for?

 _“No.”_ The response came quickly, with a certainty like stone. _“We can still sense the humans inside even though we cannot reach them. They are panicked. I believe they cannot reach Samuel, that he is somehow trapped.”_

 _“Do you know if he is injured?”_ The scream he had heard had been that of the same child who had cried out, trapped in a cage built by human hands. He recognized the sense of half-grace, half-soul reaching out for help. But the words, had there been words, had been too loud, too close. There was no understanding of how to communicate over minds, or in his panicked state, their new fledgling brother could not focus enough to call out effectively.

****

##  **“Please, please, no!”**

Michael’s wings jerked and he tumbled out of flight. His grace flared as he corrected himself. His wings were not physical and so they did not catch the wind as a falling bird’s might have. Instead, his awkward slip from his trajectory had him appearing above a vast expanse of water. The wind that blew into his face was warm and smelled of salt and sea life. He cast his grace out, orienting himself, and it took only a moment to determine where he was. Just east of Madagascar, somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Nowhere near where he needed to be.

****

##  **“Cas, please! Cas!”**

His grace billowing outward, Michael slid out of the time-space of the human’s plane and into the one where his wings resided. Directions like east and west and distances in miles or kilometers did not matter with his mind focused on where he needed to go. He reached out, grace catching on Sariel, and he felt her respond with welcoming grace, like a hand reaching out, catching his.

He appeared in a rush of wing beats next to her, crouched on the branch of a large tree. She was staring at the bunker with narrowed eyes, her head tilted slightly to the side, and Michael followed her gaze.

The humans’ bunker, so unimpressive from the outside the first time he saw it, glowed like a star with ward-light, but in a way that was _wrong_.

 _“How many are there?”_ Sariel asked quietly. _“Can you see?”_

It was difficult to tell at first, but Michael tilted his head to the side and the image in front of him shifted. Light played off new angles and he could see the wards layered on top of each other, woven together like a basket-weave in some areas, but piled together on others, burning like a fuse. It was amazing that they hadn’t gone off yet, but it was clearly only a matter of time.

Michael shook his head. _“I cannot tell. There are many.”_

Sariel nodded, her vessel’s mouth a thin, tight line.

 _“Nuriel and Zadkiel?”_ Michael asked.

_“Nuriel is attempting to find a crack in the wards to slip through and Zadkiel is trying to communicate with those within. He believes he may be able to reach the human mother, if not Gabriel or Raphael.”_

Castiel’s name was not mentioned. Michael wondered if it was because Sariel did not see him as an ally or if the fledgling’s cries of his name had her too concerned and not wanting to bring him up. Her face was a mask of stone, impossible to read. He would deal with such concerns later. He merely nodded. They were good delegations of tasks. Nuriel had been in charge of raising fledglings for many centuries. She had learned how to find the cracks where tiny angels had slipped through and become adept at maneuvering through them after her charges. Zadkiel had been in charge of listening to prayers and sending them off to their proper recipient, and while he was not, perhaps, adept at speaking back to people, his skills in communication were regardless the best among all the angels. Except, of course, for The Messenger.

Sariel flinched beside him when the scream came. He reached out and clasped her arm, letting his grace soothe hers as he bent his head against the force of the cry. There was a word on the call, but once again, it was too loud for him to distinguish. Beneath it, he could hear a steady stream of **_No No No No No_** , but it was the emotions that slammed against his mind. Grief and horror and a burning hot hatred that ached like a fever against his skin, confusing Michael with its ferocity – how could this child hate someone so much? – until he realized that the hatred was not directed outward, and he felt his grace rise up, an instinctive need to comfort this child who loathed himself too deeply, whose soul seemed set to rip itself apart.

Before he could do anything more than wonder, Dear Father, how this fledgling had been so broken and how _they_ had fallen so far, there was a flash across the wards.

Sariel said a curse word in Enochian and launched herself forward, intent on what, Michael didn’t know, but he threw himself after her. He felt the heat on the air, the sharp current as the wards, piled on top of one another in a tower that was never meant to stand, finally hit an instability they couldn’t overcome. He grabbed Sariel, grace and vessel both, and slid his wings across the planes, throwing them both away as hard as he could. He called out to Nuriel and Zadkiel as he did, a cry of retreat, and felt them both flee the area just moments before the wards erupted outward in a concussive blast a human would have been able to see, had they been looking.

Michael’s grip on Sariel tightened moments before the wave struck them. It wasn’t the blast. Neither of them remained on the humans’ plane – Michael had pulled them outside of the dimension to keep them from being struck by the wards. He didn’t know what it would do to their vessels and could only hope Raphael, Gabriel, and Castiel were aware of their imminent fall and prepared to protect their charges. He felt when the wards went down, was aware of the stretch of their reach as they physically ripped across the grass and tore leaves from the branches, but he was not expecting the static that flooded across his grace.

He felt Sariel’s shock like a physical slap, and then even the link to her was gone. Silence settled like a cloak across his mind, cutting off his vision, his hearing, his every sense. For a moment, he was nowhere, in a place so dark and deep, he thought that perhaps he had never left the Cage after all and this had all been a dream, an elaborate, hallucinatory wish for something more than pain and the loneliness of his only grace-link being with a brother he had once loved too deeply and whose loss festered like a mortal wound.

 _Alone,_ something inside him whispered.

_Alone._

_No one._

_Nowhere._

_Lost._

_You are lost._

_You have lost._

_Lost_

_Lost_

_Lost_

_Lost_

_Lost_

**_“MICHAEL!”_ **

His name tore across the silence, a hurricane in a word, and the cloak was ripped away. Voices, suddenly, everywhere, erupted in a cacophony that was deafening, biting at grace that had, for a moment, felt _nothing_.

Is that what humans felt like, without their minds linked to their brethren, without grace to entwine with another’s? How were they still surviving? How were they not all _mad_?

He could hear the Host, loud in the expanse of his mind, lapping at his grace like choppy waters. Panicked voices cried out as the angels experienced a brief moment of disconnect, their minds and grace torn apart from one another and now righted, corrected, desperate to link back with their brethren, to hold on to a piece of those whom they had, however briefly, just lost.

 _Sariel,”_ he whispered to her in his mind, his own grace reaching out to soothe grace-wings ruffled in panic. Her normally stoic-composure was broken and he could feel the ragged edges of her grace straining against the desire to wrap up within his and seek comfort. Her vessel shivered beneath his hands and he held her close. He had been half-focused on reorienting them, the brief blinding of their own grace sent them reeling through space-time. He’d needed to halt their aimless crash across dimensions before they ripped apart time with a careless slice of one wing. Now stopped, he let them linger in a point at the edge of one dimension and halfway to another. His wings stretched across three universes and he let the borders of space-time hold him in place like a finger on a moth’s wing to keep it pinned.

His own grace reached out, the red-orange of a burning hearth, and brushed across her shoulders. He heard her sob out his name and kept his grace curled around her, arms holding her close and trying to warm the chill of her terror, the keening cold of solitude.

 _“We were lost,”_ she whispered.

He had no words to say to ease the pain of that moment, to cut out the memory. For a time, they had all been lost, and however few spans of a half-second that had been, he ached like he had been apart from them all for years.

He felt as the angels found each other, their grace seeking out members still separated from the rest, drawing them in. He felt it when Nuriel reached out for him and let his grace stretch out like a hand, let her grasp hold. Felt it when Zadkiel followed her, his grace stretched out and sliding across the world like moonlight on water.

 _“Michael.”_ There were fathoms of worry in that single word and he understood. The wards had done damage to their grace, something they had never expected, and blinded them even for an instant. And they had been flying _away_. What had it done to those trapped at its source?

But still, he could hear the Host crying out, fear prominent and on its tail, the desire to move. He had chosen Sariel for this job for a reason and let her pick her companions for what she believed would be required of them. He had to trust that they could do the job he had been given, just as he had his own to do.

He reached out with his grace, soothed warmth and hearth-home across the three of them, before releasing them from his hold. He was gratified to feel the three of them come together, Nuriel and Zadkiel automatically taking up his place around Sariel, so stoic she often appeared lacking in emotions, but he knew better. He was grateful they were equally aware of her.

He shook off the hold of the universes across his wings and let his grace seek out Heaven. His very grace screamed to return to Earth, to find his brothers there and check that they were well, but he was the leader of the Host and it was his job to make sure that  _all_ the angels were hale and whole. If there were any still lost to the blinding, then he would find them and bring them home. 

He was just landing on the threshold of Heaven’s gates when he heard his name murmured on a voice like warm sandstone and felt the strength of his vessel’s knees weaken.

 _“Raphael.”_ He couldn’t stop the relief from filling his mental voice, didn’t try. _“Are you well?”_

 _“I am uninjured,”_ Raphael reassured him.

_“And the others?”_

_“Samuel Winchester is beyond my reach. He is in the hands of his brother at the moment and Dean is letting no one else near them.”_ Michael could imagine. After the human had stood eye-to-eye with him and ordered him to keep the Angel Guard out of sight and away from his brother, Michael had no doubt that the boy could have given his father pause. Perhaps had, in the past.

_“Dean and Mary are emotional distraught but holding together admirably, considering the circumstances. Castiel is keeping an eye on them, but Gabriel took the brunt of the wards when they faltered.”_

Michael felt an unnecessary breath hitch in his chest. He had seen so little of Gabriel for too long a stretch of time. If he was lost to him now, Michael didn’t know if he would be able to withstand the pain.

 _“He is uninjured,”_ Raphael said, his voice low. Even from a distance, he felt the brush of grace meant to soothe. He hadn’t realized his emotions had transferred so easily. He tried to compose himself. _“The wards ejected him from his vessel rather violently. I’m attempting to guide him back.”_

_“Do you need assistance?”_

Sometimes Michael wondered which of them was older. Raphael had a calm about him that he could never emulate. He supposed it came from being the Healer of Heaven, rather than its Commander, but it still was sometimes surprising to have that proud grace press against him, a brotherly affection he had missed _so much_ that his eyes flushed with tears.

_“Nuriel is assisting me, and Gabriel is not completely useless at the moment, for all he appears to be drunk.”_

Did… did Raphael just make a joke?

 _“Heard that, Raph,”_ Gabriel muttered across the connection, and even his mental voice slurred. He tried to reach out - Michael felt him try - but his control seemed to falter and the grace retreated in apparent exhaustion. _"_ _Heya, bro. Grace’s a bit… wibbly-wobbly. All be good when we get down.”_

It took a moment for Michael to translate the drunken speech. _“Where did he end up?”_

_“St’p worreeen, Mikey. M’fine.”_

_“Yes, you sound fine.”_

_“I am truly beginning to loathe that word,”_ Raphael noted dryly. _“Not half so far as with the Tear. He didn’t even leave the atmosphere, but he was unable to get back on his own.”_

_“Feelin’ floaty.”_

Michael laughed, a slight edge of hysteria to the sound, and he forced himself to calm when a few heads turned his way, pale faces already strained. _“Please, Raphael, if you need me, tell me and I will come.”_

 _“I know, Michael, but you have charges there to take care of.”_ He felt Raphael’s approving smile in a brush of grace against his forehead. His wings ached to touch his brother and be held in turn. How had it gone so wrong that he had once given this up?

_“Later, Mikey.”_

Michael let the conscious link fade and turned his attention to angels before him now. Raphael was right, of course. Michael, too, had charges and they were here. He could visit his brothers later, when the crisis had been dealt with. For now…

“Where are our healers?” he called, gathering the attention of everyone. He could see panicked eyes and grace trembling within their vessels. “I need to get an accurate count of how many are here and who we may be missing.” It was time to find his lost angels.

* * *

Raphael had seen many a terrible thing in his life. He had turned away from Earth and humankind centuries ago due to the terrible atrocities he had seen committed, and he had seen more blood and grace since spilt, by human and angel alike, in the name of their father. He had been horrified many times in the past, and to his shame, he had let that horror turn to apathy. But he had never been so frightened as when he witnessed the shattering of wards tear his brother’s grace from his vessel and then feel _nothing_ from him.

Angels were aware of each other. It was second nature to reach out, to touch each other, entwine their grace in the same way that a human might entwine their fingers with another’s. To lose touch of another angel’s grace, to suddenly not be able to sense them, did not mean that a connection was lost, like an electrical signal on one of humanity’s inventions. It meant that there was no grace there to connect with. It meant that the angel was gone.

He and Gabriel had been studying the wards covering the door, trying to find a way through, but the way that they were layered haphazardly over top one another suggested generations of wards being put into place with no care or at least no knowledge about the wards placed there previously. It was one of his father’s miracles that the wards hadn’t already collapsed and killed everyone in the bunker. As much as he wanted to get to Sam, to stop his screams, terrible as they were, he and Gabriel both recognized that trying to fly through the wards would only trigger them and very likely kill Sam, his brother, and his mother. It was unclear whether Raphael, Gabriel, and Castiel would survive, but considering that Raphael had both attempted to call out to the Angel Guard and fly outside of the bunker without success, he didn’t think the likelihood of their survival was one hundred percent, should they trigger the wards.

But Sam’s screams were terrible and though he could not reach outside the bunker, the emotions coming from the fledgling were easily discernable. Pain and terror, grief, loss, and a self-hatred that was choking in its magnitude. He and Gabriel kept up a running discussion as they studied the wards, suggesting and negating possibilities, everything spoken in their minds where they could communicate faster, toss out images as well as words, desperate to find an answer and rescue their little fledgling brother.

But the screams only became worse and only Raphael’s reminding Gabriel that he could not fly Dean and Mary to safety beyond the bunker kept his younger brother from trying to fly through the wards, damn the consequences, when grief and guilt mixed with Sam’s screams for his brother. He was more than grateful that the humans were incapable of such empathic abilities as the angels bore. For all that Dean’s reactions spoke of fury, Raphael could feel the self-loathing and defeat rolling off the older Winchester brother like heat, and he feared what the boy’s reaction would have been had he been able to sense Sam’s emotional state, rather than simply hear it in his cries.

Then again, from what he had glimpsed so far of their lives, and what he heard the angels whisper of, perhaps Dean was more emotionally tuned to Sam than his humanity suggested possible.

It was the fear that came with Sam’s pleading cries to Castiel that sealed it, when Gabriel suggested dismantling the wards in a single blow. Raphael was against it. It was too dangerous. Even if he cut them all off at once, there would still be the backlash of so much energy disappearing from a place. The necessity of the void being filled would cause a reaction that would be unavoidable.

_“Then you protect Mary and Cas can keep Deano safe. I’m not standing for one more minute of this, Raphael. I can’t take it. They’re hurting my kid!”_

And whoever _they_ were was another question leading to a greater fear. Who had managed to get into the bunker around both them and the Angel Guard and sealed out two archangels? What had they missed?

Raphael might have argued with Gabriel if not for the feeling of defeat, of pain and the acceptance of it, as though he was getting all the karmic retribution he was owed out of life by whatever means he was suffering that echoed from the small, broken child locked behind the door. Raphael had a moment where the phrase “just desserts” choked across his mind, and then Gabriel was throwing Dean into Cas’s arms and mentally telling them both to protect the humans, because enough was _enough_.

Not even Raphael could offer up an argument at this point, his grace aching with phantom grief, and could only offer a worried murmur that Gabriel ignored. The youngest of the archangels had left The Messenger behind and even The Trickster had taken a backseat to the fury of the Archangel of Justice. Raphael could only help him find the central point of the wards, and then watch as he severed every one of them by bringing his archangel blade down and burying it in the door to the hilt.

He had expected the wards to react. He had grabbed Mary to shield her from the backlash of displaced energy, but he was blindsided by the thrum of the wards across his grace, like eyes tearing into him, demanding they see all. It was Castiel who warned him, his own mental voice a panicked shout as he’d buried Dean’s face in his chest, shielding the human’s eyes, that had Raphael covering Mary’s face in time. The severance of the wards triggered a trap _none_ of them had recognized was there until it was in motion, and Raphael could only watch as Gabriel’s vessel was blown backward, through a wall, as his grace was forcibly ejected. He heard the scream of the wind in Gabriel’s voice as his wings were torn apart, and then

Nothing.

A silence so profound that it staggered Raphael, made his hands drop from where they had been gently guiding Mary to keep her face hidden. His mind reached for Gabriel but

Nothing.

Nothing.

A moment later, shouts and the presence of grace burst across his mind and when he reached out for Gabriel, he found him – staggered, his grace stumbling in its attempts at flight, his mental voice confused and slurring alarmingly, but alive.

For a moment…

He didn’t dare think on what he’d feared for those few seconds, lest they come to pass. At least until he had Gabriel back in his vessel, back where Raphael could reach out and touch him and assure himself that he was there.

He let Mary pull herself away from him, let her run to her sons, where Dean had encircled Sam with his body and was trying to talk him down even as lightning raced across the boy’s skin, leaving red welts behind. A quick conversation with Castiel across their minds, a moment of grace pressing against grace as the two assured themselves that the other was there, and Raphael flew to Gabriel, catching his younger brother’s grace in his hands and helping to guide him out of his drunken tumble through the sky.

Hearing Michael’s voice was a relief and he knew from the tone of both his words and the relief that echoed across their minds that he and Castiel were not the only ones who suffered a moment of grace-blindness.

This was something they would need to discuss later. Raphael suspected there would be more than a few angels in Heaven in need of reassurance from the presence of others. He thought he might well be one of them.

Whether he made his way to Heaven tonight or remained in the bunker, he was certain he would be spending his night in a nest.

As he was joined by Nuriel, who helped him guide Gabriel back to his vessel, he found he was grateful for Castiel’s foresight in creating the nest room and the humans’ willingness to go along with it. It made the bunker feel just that much more like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Mutterseelinallein_  is a German word referring to the loneliness that comes from the complete loss of everyone you love. It translates literally as "Your mother's soul has left you."


	5. Leitmotif

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many things in their lives change but this will stay the same: Dean will always protect his little brother.

She knows she needs to hold it together, needs to be strong. She can’t break down, but hearing Sam, hearing her baby screaming like she does, Mary can barely restrain herself from following Dean’s example and pounding on the door. She stands back out of the way, in part because she hopes the angels will have an answer soon and she doesn’t want to interfere with that, and also because if she steps one foot closer to the door, she thinks she may go mad until she gets inside. She doesn’t know what she will do to get in there, doesn’t think there is anything she wouldn’t do, and that scares her. She has caused so much pain following that need to do whatever was necessary. She saved John with that sense of determination, yes, but she also doomed both of her sons. It scares her that she can still feel that need in her, that readiness. She knows it’s a part of being a mother, but it still frightens her.

She stands back because she fears her own self-control and watches as Dean refuses to stop trying to break down the door, watches as Castiel stands behind him, a guardian angel if there ever was one, and she is so glad that both of her sons have him. Gabriel and Raphael, too. She can see that Sam and Dean need the both of them. Gabriel for his caring and his laughter, Raphael for his steadiness and his healing. She hurts for these angels who she can see have hurt, but she is glad that they are here, glad that they are knitting together into a unit, a family, even if an unusual one. Mary is used to unusual. It’s her default setting, it seems, and that’s okay. She’s not alone in that.

Sam’s cries get worse. His screams for Dean are terrible. She has seen the way her sons are together. Their penchant for snapping at each other, crude comments and more cuss words than she’s admittedly comfortable with a six-year-old saying, even if he only _looks_ six. But she’s not blind. She knows it was Dean who raised Sam. She can see it in how he acts toward his younger brother, the easy way he moves around a child-sized version of the brother who apparently towered over him not long ago. The way he can read Sam without even looking at him, picking up cues out of the corner of his eye and a sense for his brother that some mothers can’t boast.

And she can hear it in Sam’s voice. She can hear it in the desperation of a scream as Sam cries out for his brother. She knows the sort of desperation in a cry like that. It makes you do terrible things. Terrible things that hurt people.

But it’s when Sam starts screaming Castiel’s name that things shift. She can’t help but cover her mouth in horror, because the desperation is still there, yes, but there’s also terror and a horrible pleading, a begging cry of please, please. Mary sees the way the angel’s eyes widen, hears the sharp intake of breath in startled lungs, and she knows that he hears it, too. Hears the way that Sam is crying out, not for him to _be there_ as he had with Dean, but for him to _not_.

_Stop_ , the emotion cries, _please_ , and the way the color drains from Castiel’s face makes her ache inside, because she has seen him with her youngest son. She has seen the love he holds for her baby and she knows that, like her, he would do anything to keep him safe, knows that Sam’s cries aren’t _right_ , and fears why he is calling out in such a way. Why he is crying out as though he thinks Castiel is going to hurt him, when she knows the angel never would.

And then Sam is screaming for her, screaming for her in a way she had imagined so many times, the memory of fire and staring down into her son’s eyes in final, regretful moments. She wonders, if he’d been able to talk then, if this is the sound he would have made as he watched her burn, and she hates herself the more for thinking it, for letting it become a thought in her head, because this is a sound that he should never make. This desperate cry of grief and pain is one she never wanted either of her sons to utter, and one she is sure they are both far too familiar with.

She thinks, idly, depressingly, that it must run in the family.

* * *

 

Sam is standing in the center of the room, his fists shaking at his sides, his face ashen. There is a look in his wide eyes, a mix of horror and resignation, that makes something cold curl like a snake in Dean’s belly, and for a moment he can only stare at Sam, can only peripherally take in the charred walls of the little room, the scattered junk broken across the floor, the cupboards still flickering with small flames.

And then Sammy crumbles to the floor, and Dean can do nothing but run to him. Couldn’t have thought of anything else. Wouldn’t have dared to move anywhere but toward him. He ignores the jagged cracks in the frame where the door had been, the way the edges are blackened as though Gabriel’s actions had not erased the door so much as burnt it to a crisp so fiercely there weren’t even ashes left behind.

He cannot even bear a thought for the archangel, whose vessel lay in a heap ten feet behind him. He stumbles as his boots trample over the junk on the floor and he drops to his knees without a care for the way they crack as his fingers fist in his little brother’s shirt. Sam has slumped boneless to the floor and for a moment…

For a moment…

_He drops to his knees, catching Sammy as his younger brother falls, his limbs suddenly useless, his face a mask of startled panic. Dean grabs Sam’s shirt, his arm, pulls him close so he can look over his shoulder, down at the knife sticking out of his little brother’s back. Out of his little brother’s_ spine _, where it severed his vertebrae, cut the strings that let Sam move his legs, his arms._

_But they can fix this. They can. They’ll find a way because they’re Sam and Dean, Dean and Sam, and they go together like apples and pie, and honestly, Jesus Christ, fucking God please, Dean can’t do this without his brother, he can’t, so Sam has to be okay, he has to, because if he’s not okay, then Dean’s not okay._

_He clutches Sam to him, crushes his brother to his chest and tries to tell him that everything will be all right, that everything will be fine, that he’s okay. He doesn’t know what words he uses, knows it doesn’t matter because Sam won’t remember them, anyway. Won’t be here to remember them. The smell of blood on the air is like being impaled on a copper rod and Dean thinks his own heart might have been severed with that same knife that’s in Sam’s back, because it couldn’t hurt so bad unless he had been stabbed, surely. He clutches Sam to him with an arm around his back, wonders, thinks, when was the last time he hugged his little brother when one of them wasn’t injured, wasn’t dying, and he thinks, God, I should do that more, I should, I should make sure he knows, make sure…_

_“Sammy.” He needs to tell Sam he loves him, needs Sam to know that, wonders if he_ does _know that, even if they fight, that Dean loves him. He opens his mouth to tell him, but Sam’s head lolls against him and Dean can feel it when his heart just… stops beating. Thinks his own follows it, stalls, refuses to restart because Sam…_

_Because Sam is…_

_He is..._

“SAM!”

There’s a scream in Dean’s throat, trapped just behind his teeth, and he thinks if he opens his mouth he might just never stop screaming. He can taste blood, can smell it on the air, and he can’t tell whether it’s real or if it’s in his head, and his hands trail over Sam, fingers running through his hair, pulling at sleeves, trying to find the wound that’s causing his little brother to bleed out because he’s drowning in the smell of his brother’s life ebbing away and he thinks he might soon choke to death on this scream inside him, shaped like his brother's name.

Sam is screaming in his arms, trying to twist away from him, his words senseless to Dean’s ears as he shouts in Enochian. The only word Dean recognizes is his own name, a painful gasp on trembling lips, and he doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that Sam’s shouts are quieter than they were. Thinks it might be worse because there was a fight before in that desperation and now he can hear resignation as an undertone to a grief Dean _knows_.

He yanks Sam’s shirt up, exposing his back, and is so relieved that there’s neither a knife nor a wound that the world around him grays at the edges. He thinks, hysterically, that he might actually swoon like a desperate maiden right here, and he will never live it down. But he clutches Sam to him, ignoring the way familiar hands struggle to push him away, a high voice screaming out his name, interspersed with nonsense. He crushes Sam to him, desperate to keep him, to hold him there, and tucks his brother’s head under his chin. He feels thick curls against his throat, the brush of a wet face across his skin, and his own eyes burn hot as tears cloud his vision.

He’s muttering something. He doesn’t even know what, thinks it mightjust be Sam’s name over and over again, the only word on his lips that makes any sense. Sam screams his name against his throat and Dean’s hands glide over his back, over unwounded skin at the back of his spine, and he feels the tears slide down his cheeks, doesn’t care, because God, because God, _Sammy_.

“DEEEEAAAAANNNN!” Sam screams, and that high-pitched shriek trembles on the air only to cut off with a cough. Dean can feel tears and snot smearing across his collarbone, hears the way Sam’s breath hitches in his throat, and grabs his brother’s shoulders, forcing him back far enough that Dean can see his face.

“Sam. Sammy, you with me?” His fingers tighten on Sam’s shoulders. “Come on, dude, I need you to focus here.”

But Sam’s eyes are distant, no recognition in them at all, and his lips tremble over words that Dean doesn’t know, angel-speak a rapid, panicked murmur. And worse still, it’s repetitive, because Dean can recognize the sound of some of the words, even if he doesn’t know the meaning, and when Sam starts repeating the same phrase over and over again, it’s never a good sign.

His little brother’s words end in a choked cough and Sam gags. Dean knows if he doesn’t calm his little brother down, the kid is going to turn into a panicked, screaming, puking mess and he really doesn’t need to be worried about Sam choking on his own vomit as he tries to breathe through sheer panic. He pulls his brother back against him, tucks the kid’s head under his chin and starts to rock back and forth, murmuring mindless words, speaking anything that comes to mind, and holding his brother tight like he can keep the rest of the world from touching him if he just presses him that much closer to his heart.

Wingbeats batter the air and two angels appear, familiar in only vague recognition, but Dean remembers their faces from when they detained Crowley. Two members of the Angel Guard, and it’s then that he notices Raphael is missing. His eyes seek out the rest of his family, briefly panicked that he hadn’t been paying attention. It takes him a moment, his eyes stuttering from place to place, trying to keep the two new angels in his sights as he locates the third and his family and something he can use as a weapon.

He finds his mom first. Her face is streaked in tears and pale, but she’s watching him, staring at him and Sam as though she wants desperately to join them but thinks it wouldn’t be wise. Dean thinks she might be smart to stay back, is glad that she’s there watching, in case someone thinks it’s a good idea to come after Sam, or if the wards go up over the doorway again and lock him in this room with his panicked little brother. Probably not a good idea to be in here, not knowing what caused Sam to scream as he had. Still didn’t know if it was a thing or a person, or a thing masquerading as a person. He’d need to find out. Locate the son of a bitch and send them screaming into Hell.

One of the angels steps forward and Dean is yelling before he can even think about it. “Get the fuck away from him!” he shouts, and he can see the shock in the angel’s eyes as she jerks back. He knows his face is ugly, the way his lips are pulled back. Knows it isn’t quite human to bare your teeth in a threat, but can’t bring himself to care. His brother has been hurt and they want to come in – and do what?

“GET OUT!” he screams when she looks toward the other angel, a question in her eyes. He notes the pale complexion of the other angel’s face, wonders if its natural for the vessel or a byproduct of something else. Idly catalogues the tears in wide eyes for later contemplation, when he’s not doing his best Sammy-impression, wrapped around his little brother like a squid.

Sam screams again, his name and then some words Dean wishes to Chuck he knew because he’s heard them often enough, and what is Sam trying to tell him? What?

Wings snap and flutter and the one angel is gone. He looks up in time to see the worried expression on the female angel’s face before she flies off. He still doesn’t know where the third angel is. Still doesn’t know where…

His eyes snap to his right at a movement or a sound (though how he can hear anything over Sammy’s hoarse cries, he doesn’t know), and he sees Castiel. The angel is standing perfectly still and when Dean looks at his face, he sees that the seraph is already gazing at him. His expression is tight with worry, blue eyes clouded with what Dean recognizes as uncertainty and a wish to do more. He feels some of the tension in his back ease, knowing Cas is there. The third member of the Angel Guard might be out of his sight, but Cas has his back. Dean knows he can count on that, even if he also knows he doesn’t deserve it.

He’ll take it for now, because Sam needs it, and Dean turns his attention back to his little brother, lets his focus narrow in on the most important person in his world. Sam’s hands have come up and are clutching at Dean’s shirt, rather than fighting, and the face that had been shaking against Dean’s neck is buried in the collar of his shirt. Dean flattens one hand against Sam’s back, lowers his head so he can press his nose against Sam’s head above his ear and murmurs softly. Shushes him, trying to keep the desperation from his voice, as his hand rubs across Sam’s back. His screams are tapering off, though Dean doesn’t know if it’s because he’s calming or because his choking gasps for breath have exhausted him too much to continue.

“Shh, Sammy,” he mutters against dark curls, “shhhh…”

Sam hiccups against his collarbone and Dean can feel those small fingers tighten around the fabric of his shirt. He breathes in the smell of his brother’s shampoo, revels in holding him in his arms, and thinks of years of having Sam this small and how much he didn’t realize he’d missed it, when being a young, stupid kid made showing affection less difficult.

He thinks of holding his brother’s body as blood runs thick over his hands and wishes he’d remembered before now how much regret he’d had in that moment. How much he’d wished that he had shown Sam the affection he felt for him outside of moments where one of them had almost died. He tightens his arms around his little brother, clutching his shuddering body close, and thinks to do better now. Thinks that, if they are all getting a second chance, then that means he can try again at being the big brother he misses seeing when he looks in a mirror.

Sam’s fingers clutch at his shirt, pulling hard on the fabric, and he hears a broken “Dean?” Like the kid’s not sure. Like the kid doesn’t know if he’s really here, and where else would he be?

There’s nowhere else in the world that matters. Heaven, Hell, angels and demons, they can all wait. When his brother needs him, there’s nowhere else Dean is going to be.

“I’m here, Sammy,” he murmurs, rubbing his thumb over Sam’s neck, trailing it down his unbroken spine. He hears Sam choke out a sob and then the mutters start again, Enochian promises Dean doesn’t know, and he shushes Sam. Presses his lips to the top of his little brother’s head and hums softly, the way he used to when Sam was really little, when nightmares woke him screaming in the middle of the night, in one hotel or another. He remembers terrified hazel eyes swimming with tears as Sam cried out, sometimes Dean’s name, sometimes for their mom. He doesn’t think Sam remembers those nights. Is grateful that Sam doesn’t recall the dreams, the terrible nightmares of their mother burning on the ceiling that had haunted him for years, that used to make him flinch away from any source of fire, no matter how small. He remembers how much their dad would drink in the days after Sam had a nightmare when he had been home to hear, and how much more often John would be sure his hunts took him out over night, to avoid the memories, the screaming _._

Dean remembers one night, after it took hours to calm Sam down in a dirty hotel room with their dad gone almost a week, promising himself that he would _never_ go back to that house, and he would absolutely never take his little brother back there. He remembers wishing they could put the nightmares behind them, that he could make Sammy forget that night, make his sleep come easier. And he remembers humming in the hours before dawn, when his brother’s eyes stared up at him, weary and frightened, pleading for answers Dean didn’t have.

Dean brushes Sam’s curls back from his face and catches hazel eyes, weary with exhaustion and pain. He hums under his breath, a tune that recalls a shared bed in a dark room, a head of curls tucked under his chin and hands fisted in his shirt. He watches as Sam’s eyes fill with recognition of the tune, breathes deep as that darkness in his eyes fades just a little, and feels almost giddy with memory when Sam lets himself relax against Dean, tucking his head under Dean’s chin and bringing his hands up to fist in Dean’s collar. He leans back a little, until he’s resting against one of the legs of the counter with Sam laying across his heart, and lets the familiar words come.

_“I'm diggin' my way_   
_I'm diggin' my way to something_   
_I'm diggin' my way to somethin' better."_

It's been too long since he's sung. His voice cracks on the words, disused to them after so long as just a hum in the back of his mind on dark nights, but he remembers the words. Clears his throat and sings on, his voice soft in the silence, interspersed only with Sam's shuddering breaths against his throat.

_"I'm pushin' to stay_  
 _I'm pushin' to stay with something_  
 _I'm pushin' to stay with something better_  
  
_I'm sowing the seeds_  
 _I'm sowing the seeds I've taken_  
 _I'm sowing the seeds I take for granted."_

He knows the others are staring. He can feel Cas's gaze like a brand on his skin, knows his mom has questions in her eyes, but he doesn't look up, doesn't give them but a cursory thought. Sam's breaths are easing and he can feel thin fingernails pressing against his chest. He feels tears flush his eyes again.  
  
_"This thorn in my side_  
 _This thorn in my side is from the tree_  
 _This thorn in my side is from the tree I've planted_

_It tears me and I bleed_   
_And I bleed."_

He keeps his voice soft, even though the song itself gets harsher toward its end. It's not a traditional lullaby, not like parents normally sing to their kids, but they had never been traditional. His voice soothes out across the chorus, following the same slow tune of the song's first part, and he lets his hand trail up and down Sam's back.    
  
_"Caught under wheel's roll_  
 _I take the leech I'm bleeding me_  
 _Can't stop to save my soul_  
 _I take the leash that's leading me_  
 _I'm bleeding me_  
 _I can't take it_  
 _Caught under wheel's roll_  
 _The bleeding of me_  
 _Of me_  
 _The bleeding of me_  
  
_Caught under wheel's roll_  
 _I take the leech I'm bleeding me_  
 _Can't stop to save my soul_  
 _I take the leash that's leading me_  
 _I'm bleeding me_  
 _I can't take it_  
 _Caught under wheel's roll_  
 _The bleeding of me_  
 _The bleeding of me."_

He feels Sam's fingers slid under his shirt, feels the small hand spread out over his chest, right above his heart. The soft sigh of Sam's breath and the way he presses his head against Dean's chest so he can hear his heartbeat making Dean's voice tremble as he sings.  
  
_"I am the beast that feeds the feast_  
 _I am the blood, I am release_  
 _Come make me pure_  
 _Bleed me a cure_  
 _I'm caught, I'm caught, I'm caught under_  
  
_Caught under wheel's roll_  
 _I take the leech I'm bleeding me_  
 _Can't stop to save my soul_  
 _I take the leash that's leading me_  
 _I'm bleeding me_  
 _I can't take it, I can't take it, I can't take it_  
 _The bleeding of me_  
  
_Come on_  
_Bleed me."_

He feels Sam's tears leaking through the thin fabric of his shirt, feels his own tears on his face, and can't bring himself to wipe them away. If they deserve anything, he and his brother, it's tears. God knows they've been through enough shit. Chuck knows he's almost lost his brother too many times and himself along the way. He closes his eyes, lets his own fingers find Sam's heartbeat through his back, and exhales his own breath of relief. The smell of blood fades from his nose, finally. Sam is here. And so is he.

_"I'm digging my way_  
 _I'm digging my way to something_  
 _I'm digging my way to something better_  
  
_I'm pushing to stay_  
 _I'm pushing to stay with something_  
 _I'm pushing to stay with something better_  
  
_With something better."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Leitmotif_ is a German word that translates literally as "leading motive." It refers to a recurrent theme throughout a musical or literary composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. 
> 
> The song that Dean sings is "Bleeding Me," by Metallica. It gets a bit heavy toward the end so I'm headcanoning that Dean keeps his singing soft, but as you like. I definitely suggest checking it out if you haven't heard it before. It's quite beautiful.


	6. Saudade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam doesn't remember when Dean first started singing, but his life can be measured in music and silence.

Dean.

The earliest memory he has is of his brother.

He used to lie in bed and try to think back far enough that he could remember things before the fire. Tried to stretch his mind back and find his mother’s face somewhere in his memories. He remembers, one night when he was six or seven, lying in bed with his teeth clamped over the hotel blanket, trying to strangle his tears before they could wake his brother. It never worked, of course. Dean called it his Sammy Sense. He didn’t even need to make a sound – if something was wrong, Dean would wake up and come annoy him until he spilled.

He remembers trying to explain through his tears that he wanted to remember. Remembers the look on Dean’s face, the horror, when his brother had misunderstood, thought Sam was trying to remember the fire. It had been one of the terrible nights between the two of them as children. Dean’s face white, his own memory of that terrible night playing in his eyes like a film Sam never wanted to see, and Sam in tears because he wanted Dean to understand that’s _not_ what he meant, but he can’t find the words and his voice won’t work around tears that just won’t stop falling.

He just wants to know what his mom looked like. He just wants her to be more than a blank space in his heart. He hears other kids say it like it’s a precious thing – “Mom” – like it’s the answer to every question that might ever be asked, but it’s only a question in his own head. A silhouette in the shape of a person he thinks he knows in his dreams sometimes, but there’s no face for him when he wakes, no kind smile or laughing eyes. He stretches his mind back, trying so hard to remember, and only catches the smell of ash and the taste of something sharp on his tongue.

There’s a hot, angry feeling in his stomach when he thinks of Dean’s white face, his reluctance to talk about that night or anything before it. He has no name for the feeling, no words to explain. It’s not until he’s older and the memory is almost gone of that night that he understands what he had been feeling. Envy. He’d hated Dean in that moment; six-year-old Sam lying in bed with tears hot on his cheeks, worthless to explain his feelings to his older brother. He knew Dean had been hurting but a part of him hadn’t cared. He envied Dean’s pain, because it meant he had a memory, even just a single memory, of their mother. Dean missed their mother because, in his head, he had a picture that had been ruined by the fire. He _had a face to miss_. Sam only had an empty spot where no one had ever been and would never be.

That human-shaped void never leaves his heart, but in some ways it's diminished over the years. Dean cannot be his mother or his father, but it’s clear later that he tried his absolute best, and Sam knows that it’s only because of Dean that he is still here. Nevermind Cold Oak, nevermind pulling him out of the apartment when all he wanted to do was burn with Jess. After the fire, the first fire, after Dean carried him out (and how he wished he’d known that before their trip back to Lawrence, back to the start of everything), he kept on carrying Sam. Making sure he dressed warm, ate well (or as well as they could manage – Sam knows he ate better than Dean). He made sure Sam got to stay in the same school district for as long as he could convince their father, because Sam _liked_ school, liked learning, and Dean did his best to make sure Sam got what he wanted _and_ what he needed.

He wishes he’d understood that more as a child. Wishes he’d been aware of just how much Dean gave up for Sam. He can see it now, looking back. Has known for years now that Dean… Dean had _always_ been there. Always.

If Sam stretches his mind back, even now, even with perfect-angel-recall, his very first memory is of Dean. It’s not even a visual memory. It’s auditory, nothing but sound. Just the sound of Dean humming.

He can’t attach a specific song to it, doesn’t know if it has one or if Dean was making random connections, sound flowing aimlessly, but it’s soothing. Even without sight, he knows it’s his brother – it’s _always_ Dean – because it’s not the last time Dean hums. It continues on throughout the years. He wakes up from terrible dreams to the sound of his brother’s voice. He doesn’t remember when the humming starts gaining a recognizable tune but it may have been around the same time that Dean starts singing.

There are so many songs that Sam heard first in his brother’s voice. Songs it took him time to recognize when he heard them on the radio in diners. Sometimes he’s still blindsided, even now, when a song comes on that was Dean’s before it belonged to anyone else.

Music seemed to fill his life growing up. Where they were sleeping – a hotel or the back seat of the Impala – and what they would be eating were never sure things. If they would be warm, if they would be safe, if they would be hiding from just monsters or also from Child Services. Nothing was certain in Sam’s life except that Dean would be there and his nights would be filled with music.

Sometimes the music would slip into their days. When their dad was out on a hunt and left the two of them alone, sometimes Dean’s voice would fill the hotel room at odd moments. Never full songs, not like at night, but the occasional line or chorus before it dissolved into humming, interspersed with Dean telling him to eat his breakfast or swearing because he splattered grease across his hands.

When their dad had started taking Dean on hunts with him, the silence had been the hardest thing to get used to. Sam would often stay with Pastor Jim or Bobby, or whoever else their dad could foist Sam off on at the last moment. Sam remembered waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares about Dean being hurt. Even before he’d known about hunting, those nightmares had been prevalent in his mind, along with one repetitive one he could never remember when he woke and only knew it tasted the same on his tongue, like ash and bile.

Waking up in an unfamiliar bed to silence was the worst thing, because Sam’s mind would convince him that the lack of humming meant Dean was never coming back. More than one of his “babysitters” had stopped taking him in after one of those nightmares, when the day following it left Sam bitterly cranky and snapping at everyone and sure, somehow, that Dean was dead. He hadn’t understood then his father’s irritation and only learned years later during a fight that John had thought he was doing it on purpose, trying to make it difficult for John to leave him anywhere. In his own fury, Sam hadn’t denied it.

He thinks sometimes, looking back, that the silence was a warning sign to what was coming between them. Sam had always been good at running from what bothered him. He didn’t know who he got that trait from. Knew it wasn’t his father and, honestly, had always hoped his mom was braver than he was, because when things came down to terrible choices, Sam’s choice was always to run. So when the fights got worse and the silence came more often than the sound of Dean’s voice, Sam found a place to run to. Oh, he had more reasons than that for leaving for Stanford, many more, but that was one of them. He couldn’t take the constant fighting, but he couldn’t survive the silence, and it seemed like his choice was either one or the other.

So Sam ran.

At Stanford, of course, the silence continued. Worse still, there was no chance of it being broken in an odd moment where it was just him and Dean in the hotel, because the apartment was silent of all noise but the distant pounding of feet on the stairwell above him. No breathing in a second bed, no older brother grumbling about nothing being on television. Silence.

That first week, he’d used what little cash he had to buy a cassette player and a couple tapes from some of the bands Dean favored. At night, he’d lay down to sleep with the music so low it was barely audible. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Metallica would croon lullabies out of the speakers and Sam would sometimes wake to the guitar riffs, unexpected chaos in what had been a familiar mumbling, but often the sound was just low enough that he could convince himself it wasn’t a radio. Sometimes, in the half-asleep moments that left you uncertain what was dream and what was reality, he’d hear what sounded like a creaking floorboard or feel something brush through his hair. And then the song on the tape would change with a click and a soft humming would send him sliding the rest of the way into sleep, so certain that the voice was real and he could hear someone else breathing beside him.

He’d wake up every morning after those nights hoping to find a beer bottle and a note on the table. Maybe something ridiculously Dean, like “cut your hair, you look like a pony," but the table would always be empty and his fridge as full as the night before. Never any sign that anyone had been there and it would just be a reminder of how horribly alone he was in a world he really didn’t understand. And how terribly he missed his brother.

Coming back with Dean had been difficult because of the circumstances. Losing Jess, who hadn’t replaced Dean – no one could replace Dean – but who had offered her own music to fill the silence, had been a blow. Getting back into hunting had been both wonderful (such a relief to be doing something) and terrible (he would never escape it, would he?). Worse still, worst of all, had been the silence.

Oh, the Impala wasn’t quiet. The engine rumbled under his seat, a steady, peaceful rhythm that never failed to calm him, but Dean’s tapes played constantly, blaring out familiar lyrics that Sam had loved since that very first memory, but never in the right voice. _Never_ in the right voice. And when Sam had convinced Dean to keep the radio off (or made him angry, in which case no music soothed any tempers), the silence was profoundly worse.

Only a few times had Sam heard Dean sing since they rejoined the hunt. Most often he would hear him mumbling low in the shower, when he thought Sam couldn’t hear him. The singing then had been meant for himself, Sam knew, but he still took the barest bit of comfort from the sound of his brother’s voice, however much his listening was an intrusion.

The other time… the other time had been after the Mystery Spot. After too many Tuesdays and then Wednesday, _the Wednesday_ , and an even longer string of days after that. After Mystery Spot, when Sam had been a wreck incapable of letting Dean out of his sight for even a second, when the simple act of waking up in the morning could send Sam into a panic attack, he remembered Dean singing.

The memory was vague. He hadn’t been in his right mind on his better days at that point and too close of a call on a hunt taken too soon had brought on his worst. He remembers little beyond the crack of a gun and blood welling beneath white cotton, all blurring into darkness as a shadow like a physical thing fell over him, pulling him down into a place well beyond madness.

The low, humming notes of a song he hadn’t heard in a decade appeared in snatches, like flashes of sunlight filtering down through icy seawater. Dean’s voice, singing softly, had followed him down into dark places and eventually brought him back, found him wrapped up in his brother’s arms in the back of the Impala, the engine running, heat blasting, and the fuel tank almost empty, Dean’s Sammy Sense like a physical meter glowing in the red.

He thinks he probably passed out finally, or maybe Dean drugged him with something, because once he was back enough to recognize that Dean was okay, wasn’t lying in a parking lot with a bullet in his chest, Sam had faded off somewhere he didn’t remember. He’d only woken later in a hotel room, buried under blankets in a queen-sized bed with his brother snoring in his ear.

They’d stayed in that hotel room for almost a week, sharing a bed because Dean claimed all the double rooms were taken. Sam hadn’t argued even though Dean hadn’t put an ounce of effort into the lie. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of four feet between him and his brother. Not with six months and an eternity of Tuesdays already like an ocean between them.

Now, lying on top of his brother’s chest, curled up like a cat with his nose buried in the soft fabric of his brother’s shirt, Dean’s heartbeat a steady thrum beneath the sound of his voice, Sam feels like he can finally breathe. He knows it’s not real, this moment. Dean hasn’t sung to him since before Hell, when they were at odds because of his deal but still together, still brothers. Now there’s so much between them. All the times Sam messed up, the demon-blood and Ruby, Hell and Lucifer. All the ways they betrayed each other, the terrible things they did trying to save one another, only to cause more pain. All the times Sam has said _yes_.

Oh, he knows Dean loves him. There’s no question about that. But Sam knows he’s messed them up, broken them, and the silence has been too full between them for too long. Sam doesn’t deserve to hear Dean’s singing after all he’s done, and he knows Dean would never offer. And Sam would never ask.

He knows this isn’t real, but he’s good at pretending.

The tears slide down his cheeks and pool in the fabric beneath him and Sam clings to the heartbeat he can hear in his ears.

Sam is so good at pretending, he can fool anyone.

So he closes his eyes, listens to the croon of his brother's voice like a heartbeat shared between them, and focuses on fooling himself. 

At least until the music stops. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Saudade_ is a Portuguese term for a deep, melancholic longing for someone or something that is absent.
> 
> Some songs I listened to while writing this:
> 
> "Hey You" - Pink Floyd  
> "Nothing Else Matters" - Metallica  
> "Comfortably Numb" - Pink Floyd  
> "Unforgiven II" - Metallica
> 
> Do you have a song you think would suit Dean and Sammy? Share it below!


	7. Enthousiasmos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel has always been curious.

Castiel did not believe he would ever grow tired of admiring his father’s creation.

This world on which he stood was too vast to speak of in simple terms. There were too many things that made it up, both wonderful and terrible, and all of them beautiful in a way he had not been able to fully appreciate until after he delved into the depths of Hell and grasped Dean Winchester’s soul within his own grace. He did not know it then how much he would change in the following years, even though he knew that something _had_ changed. He did not think any angel could have touched Dean’s soul and come out of it unchanged, but he is glad that it was he who was given the task. At the time, it had been a duty that he performed, but looking back he sees it only as a blessing, a gift from his Father, that he was permitted to hold such a bright soul within hands unworthy of it.

He hopes that he has grown worthy of it. He has tried. He knows he did not do well at the start. He was doing his duty, a good soldier of Heaven, trying to follow the rules laid down before them. Serve the Commander. Follow your orders. Do as you are told. Do not question.

Do not question.

The more he was told not to question, the more questions seemed to fill him.

He wanted the whys of all things, asking questions in his own mind that only his Father could have answered. Why did he make the oceans as he did, so that they fell to the whims of the moon? Why did he make the lands so that they would break apart? Why did he give some creatures wings but not the ability to fly? Why did the elephant have such a long trunk? What exactly happened to create the platypus?

There were a thousand questions about the world his Father had created. Things that Castiel saw as the centuries rushed by brought thoughts to his mind continuously, questions he couldn’t answer but learned not to ask. There had been times, he thinks, when he did ask, but he doesn’t remember them like he doesn’t remember much of his early years. He had done a poor job of following orders when he was young. He had tried to be better, to do as he was told, but always the questions. They filled his mind, like a pond fed by a waterfall that had no outlet and so overflowed. His mind was too small for all the thoughts that filled him, all the questions he wanted to ask. He could burst with them, but questions were not permitted in Heaven or by his brothers. He had learned not to ask, and so Castiel sought his answers elsewhere.

He often traveled to Earth. His Father had been far beyond his reach even before he learned that he was gone from Heaven, and so Castiel searched for answers to the questions he had no one to ask. He would seek out the beasts of the world that had lesser minds than the humans, bury his grace in the body of a creature that he didn’t require the consent of.

Castiel sought answers to why the oceans bowed to the moon, and so he buried his grace in the heart of a whale. Long before humans crafted towering buildings of metal and glass, Castiel, the Angel of Thursday, learned to sing the song of a blue whale, hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ocean. He remembers still how he let the instinct-mind of the whale he was possessing sing out its call, how he let it filter through his grace, hum across his own mind like an echo. He remembers clearly the way the ocean sounded with the other members of his pod singing back to the whale – to him – in highs and lows. An orchestra of the sea. It had been over twelve millennia since he had sung the song but he remembers it as easily as though he had just learned it. He supposes, if he tried, if he let his grace help the mediocre lungs of this human vessel compensate, he could sing it even now. Had he the desire.

The oceans made up most of the surface of this small world, but not all of it, and there were so many questions. Castiel once sang with the blue whales far below the surface of the world, and he once sang somewhere in the high reaches, as close to Heaven as he could get without leaving the Earth behind. He flew with wings so unlike his own, feathers catching wind and warm thermals, rather that grace sliding against time and space, and yet the black of the feathers glimmered with color when the light struck them just so and he remembers the shadows of his wings stretching behind him in a way not dissimilar to that such a very short time ago, in the grand scheme of things. He wonders if the gravely voice of James Novak, of the vessel he now wears, _is_ , drew him for the timbre of it. Ravens are songbirds, after all, nevermind that their song is little appreciated. He remembers flying on warm skies, wings beating to the rhythm of hundreds around him, their song bearing down on the world like a thunderstorm rumbling in high clouds. An unkindness, a flock of ravens is called. Perhaps that is telling of who he is as a person, that he is drawn to the sort of creatures that seem to so emulate himself. Or perhaps he took upon himself their fate when he let his grace flow with their songs. Blue whales hunted and slaughtered near to extinction, ravens shunned for their throaty cries, their diets, and whispers of death on their wings.

He remembers seeking out animals who did not sing in the same way as whales and birds. The lingering question of why the moon taunted the tides taking him back to the oceans. His grace found a temporary home in the body of a dolphin and once again he was swimming with a pod. Rather than a song, the instinct-mind of the dolphin taught him different ways to communicate. There were whistles, chirps, and chapping sounds, but what fascinated him most were the movements of the body he inhabited. A snap of the jaws, clapping his tail on the surface of the water – such simple motions spoke things to his pod. His head butted against the head of another, and then their bodies leaping out of the water, twisting in the air in a brief moment of weightlessness, before crashing back down to the sea. His grace danced across grey-skin, learning the nuances of every motion, as a mind that had no actual words spoke to him of language through movement, and for the first time, Castiel understood what it meant to dance.

Curiosity had him seeking other creatures who could not sing. He ran across grasslands amidst a herd of horses, each flick of his ears, every toss of his head telling a story. He leapt over tree roots and around the branches of fir trees in the slender body of a deer, speaking with a tail that flashed like a lantern in the dark. He splayed colorful feathers from a plume larger than that of a phoenix and learned all the stories a lion could tell with the curl of a long, dusty tail.

He made his way to the icy desert of the arctic and found a temporary nest in the body of a penguin, the question of why this bird could not fly burning like a flare in his mind. He found an instinct-mind burning with as much curiosity as his own. He remembers how it felt to dive from the top of an ice cliff, throwing himself into the air in a mockery (hope?) of flight, before crashing into waters he was growing to know like a second (first?) home.

He did not linger long in the bodies of the animals he found. Minutes, sometimes, a few days at the most, before he slipped out and flew somewhere else. Duty carried him back to Heaven. Duty and the desire to follow orders, to be a good soldier, but curiosity always carried him away again, back to Earth. He remembers once, traveling back to the dusty planet after spending centuries behind Heaven’s gates, finding the world so very much changed. He remembers seeking out old haunts and finding many of them missing. The blue whales all but gone for mankind’s violence and greed, the horses which once ran free enslaved as beasts of burden. The ravens shunned as pests and death-omens. He remembers hating mankind in a moment that frightened him, one that he could not understand. He remembers crying out, asking  _why_ , begging for answers-help-answers-why-please-Father, and he remembers how the fear of his own hatred sent him fleeing to the first safe place he came across.

A tiny body, limp and cold beneath shadowed skies, vulnerable and young and so desperate for help. Castiel remembers how his grace slid in - too much, surely, for something so small – and buried him deep in the heart of a beast so like those he had inhabited before. His grace and power eased the fear in a trembling body, warmed frozen limbs and gave strength where strength and life were failing, as he let the instinct-mind of the creature fold around him like a blanket, burying him in a hidden place and soothing his own fears.

He remembers little of the first few days, keeping himself tucked within the creature and letting its own instinct-mind hold control. He only unfurled himself later, opening his grace to see that the… cat? Child-cat? Kitten. The kitten had found itself a home among a human.

He had thought of leaving, as his grace looked through bright green eyes and spied unfamiliar things. The kitten had no words for couch or chair or carpet or ceiling fan. But as he peered around through the kitten's eyes, that instinct-mind told him what it did know. It knew that the carpet was soft under its paws and did not hurt like the cold black road outside. It knew that the couch felt good to sink its claws into and that the chair grew warm when the human sat in it for a long time before getting up. It knew that the ceiling fan sometimes moved and if it sat very still and watched, he could follow one of the long blades as it circled around and around. He knew that the human gave him food that was soft on young teeth and made his belly feel warm and good, and that the huddle of blankets inside a box were warm and smelled of safe and hidden places. He knew that the human sometimes went away but always came back with soft touches and scratches that itched all the right places. He knew that the Outside was cold and hard and belly-hurting and lonely, and that the Inside was warm and soft and belly-warm and filled with gentle-scratchy touches and soft hands and something that tasted like Love.

For a time… such a short time in the great span of his life, but long in the eyes of these humans and longer still in the eyes of a cat, Castiel forgot he was an Angel of the Lord. He forgot his home was Heaven and his duty was to his superiors and he should follow orders and do as he was told and never ask questions. For a while, so long and so short a while, Castiel the Angel of Thursday went away and only Khamisi remained.

Khamisi was a tireless kitten. Endlessly curious, he climbed curtains to see how high he could get, knocked everything that moved off the countertop to see if-where-how fast it fell, crawled under the couch and behind the television and into every box that entered the house. He sniffed everything, tried to lick what smelled interesting, and chased things that moved. He learned that yarn was a ferocious enemy he could never defeat because it had far too many arms and the red dot was a trickster that knew how to disappear the moment it got bored. He learned that there was a button that turned on the television, but he got much more attention when he stepped on the one that turned on the radio, especially when it was dark out and his human was snoring. He learned that food tasted better out of a can and water much better fresh from a faucet but that hugs and scratches were always perfect when the hands giving them were his human's.

He spoke the language of his feline body in the twist of his ears, the angle of his whiskers, the flick of his tail. He learned that humans did not understand this language and so he learned to yowl and hiss and chirp to get food and scratches and treats and hugs.

He learned that curling up on the warm cushion of a recently-vacated chair was pleasant, but lying on his human’s chest and listening to her breathe was _wonderful_. He found comfort in the curl of slender arms around his body and fingers tracing patterns in his fur, and he learned that humans sang, too – sweet songs that seemed familiar when his eyes were closed and sleep was close enough that Castiel peeked around the edges of Khamisi, questioning familiarity.

So many questions answered in a sniff of his nose, the touch of his whiskers, the curl of a tail, the flicker of an ear. Khamisi was as endlessly curious as the angel he had once been, seeking answers in everything.

If he looked back on it, really looked, Castiel knows he could trace every moment in his memory, but he keeps the memory at a distance. He remembers the elegance of a body crafted for movement, the sinewy dance of cat-paws silent across the floor. He remembers comfort and contentment and an aching feeling of _home_ he hadn’t realized he was missing until he found it. He remembers her, his human, in sensations rather than looks. Does not remember what color her eyes were or the fall of her hair, but can recall the way it felt as she breathed with him tucked under her chin. Remembers the press of lips on his head, right at the spot where his scent-glands secreted pheromones, every kiss marking her as _his_. He remembers the humming of tunes late at night, when Khamisi and Castiel were both sleeping, only the barest bit of instinct-grace-mind consciously peering out to catch sight of _something_ like a glow, like familiarity, like peace and love and forever behind eyes that looked so human only when he was awake. He remembers a long life, a long time, spent under gentle hands and kind words, soft touches and secret smiles pressed against his fur. And he remembers happiness in sad eyes (or sadness in happy eyes?) as time drew to a close for Khamisi. As breaths came harder and easier at once, and there was fear and sorrow and something like a terrible loss on the edge of everything, but he does not know if it was his or Khamisi’s or if it came from his human.

He remembers a soft hand that never pulled away from his fur, pressed against him like a promise, and a low hum like something he thought he should remember, a song he show know, following him down as Khamisi sank away into oblivion and Castiel came back. Castiel, who remembered upon the loss of that instinct-mind, a brother for sixteen long (short, too short!) years, that he was an Angel of the Lord and not a cat, not a kitten, not a pet to a human. Castiel.

Castiel, who took to the air, to the wind, who leapt across time and through space on wings made of grace back to his home, to his duty, to Heaven and his Commander and all of the orders he needed to follow, because he was Castiel, Angel of the Lord, the Angel of Thursday, and he did not have time to play as a kitten for a human who would not survive another sixty years, because Castiel was an ancient being who would live forever, and humans’ lives were so, _so_ short. 

It was twelve years before Castiel made his way back to Earth, back to the place that he had lived for sixteen years as a kitten. His— _the_ human was no longer there. The house had a small family – a young man and woman with a little girl, perhaps five years old, with bright red curls and freckles. Castiel had taken another form, another cat, this one an alleycat that had been on its last leg. He’d slipped into the ragged creature’s body, careful not to bury himself too deep, and cringed at the aching _want_ in the small form. Hunger had not been a problem for Khamisi, who was loved and well-fed and cared for. Barely a thought and Castiel had healed the broken tail and ragged scratches of the body he inhabited, regrew fur where it had been torn away and soothed the sharp pangs of hunger.

Sitting on top of a fence, Castiel, Angel of the Lord, had studied the small red-haired child who now lived in the house that had once been his home and questioned. Where was the woman he had called his human? Where was the one who had loved him and fed him, thinking him a mere cat? Where was the human who had so cared for one small creature who could do nothing in return for her? Where? Where and why?

Waiting there, head tilted to the side as he studied the small child with a cat’s perspective, Castiel pondered and Castiel watched. It was not long before the little girl came over and buried tiny fingers – so unlike his human’s! Too small! – in his fur, scratching the itchy places and smoothing his fur. The touch was so much like the healing touch of grace on grace-wings that Castiel almost cried out, because his human had done that to him. _His_ human had smoothed his grace-fur once and he had not known it for what it was. He had not remembered he was Castiel and he had not known the comfort of his grace being soothed, even though he knows that her touch eased it, for his wings had been in better shape upon his return to Heaven than they had been in centuries. Even now, this child’s small hands soothed his grace and he didn’t know how it was possible. She was only a human!

“It’s okay, kitty. I won’t hurt you.” A child’s voice. They were all children, so young and small and weak, these humans. And yet, somehow, their touch could soothe. How was that?

Castiel peered at the small child, seeking grace in a tiny body, but he could see she was human only. Her soul shone gentle, sunlight through leaves, and her fingers were soft as they smoothed over fur. Castiel looked to her parents, saw only humans. Gentle humans with bright, gentle souls.

He left the cat behind, left him in the care of the little girl, whose gentle hands would soothe distrust and fear from old bones. He fled the humans and their gentle hands and fearsome souls, seeking out the sea and the ocean’s deep places, and for a time, he hid.

But in the deep, still, he questioned.

Endless questions. Endless curiosity. A million wonderings. These humans with their bright souls… why had his father created them? Why had he given them this Earth and these hands, so different from Heaven’s energies and the grace of the angels. Why had he filled their world with tiny, four-legged creatures who were dependent upon them? Why not give these smaller creatures another world, another place, safe from the humans who lived so much longer than them? These humans who were larger and could so easily hurt them if they wanted to, but whose hands could be so gentle if they only dared…

Castiel went back to the house only once more. Long enough to answer a question he had forgotten to ask of _his_ human, but that he could learn of this new human, this young child whose small hands were capable of soothing the grace of an angel.

The little girl’s name was Eliana.

Eliana.

A Hebrew name.

Eliana: My God has answered.

* * *

Castiel did not return to Earth for some time after that. He remained in Heaven, playing the good soldier, following the rules, doing as he told. He asked no questions out loud. Not out loud.

But they filled his mind regardless.

When he rescued Dean Winchester. _After_ he rescued Dean Winchester, Castiel did something he had never done before. He took a human vessel.

In a moment, his mind was filled with _answers_.

ANSWERS.

A thousand questions that had burned through his mind, a steady drum of _why_ and _what_ and _who_ and _when_ a constant thrum in the back of his mind erupted to the forefront. The mind of James Novak was more complicated than the instinct-driven mind of the animals he had taken previously. Castiel had no understanding of how to sort information, or find it, or ask for it. Years of inhabiting bodies had left him capable of moving, at least, but his mind was _his_ and James Novak’s was _James Novak’s_ and the distinction was obvious. The questions, however, were adamant, and for a time – how long had Dean be alive before Castiel managed to find him in-vessel? – those questions burning at the back of his mind became his full focus, because James Novak’s mind _answered automatically_.

The gravity of the moon grew stronger the closer it came to the Earth surface and pulled the ocean’s water toward it, creating the constant rhythm of the waves.

The continents of the Earth were once a single unit – _Pangea_ , James Novak’s mind informed him – but tectonic plates and shifts and drifts sent them apart and even their position now wasn’t permanent. Humans and animals both evolved differently across the continents. Different beliefs, different languages, different foods and thoughts and perspectives.

_I don’t know why some birds can’t fly,_ James Novak’s mind told him.  _They just can't._

_An elephant has a long trunk because it does. Woolly mammoths had trunks, too._

_What is a platypus?_ And then, after an image of a platypus flashes across their minds, _That can’t possibly be a real thing._

And then information, random information, facts and theories and human-ponderings, danced tantalizingly across his mind. Things human children are taught in school that were taken for granted, buried low. Names of dinosaurs, newly discovered species, extinct species, endangered species, zoos, aquariums, museums, when humans first flew, the printing press, movies and television, the day that man first set foot on the Moon, space ships, astronauts, how many unread books were currently sitting on James Novak’s bookshelf, waiting to be devoured. It took Castiel longer than he had expected to shut off the influx of information, unsure whether it was because his vessel was a human that so much came to him, or if he was so used to letting the mind of the creatures he inhabited teach him what they knew across his grace. He shut off the connection, tamped it down, forbid it from intruding, and went to find Dean Winchester.

There are things that Castiel regrets about the way he handled his interactions with James Novak. He knows that his violently breaking the connection between their minds left the human a mere observer behind his eyes – unable to move, to scream, because there was no one listening. He is ashamed of his part in causing James Novak distress, wishes he could undo it or make up for it, especially after his desperation caused so much distress later, when he possessed Claire to get her father to say yes.

He wishes, too, that he had let himself learn from the man. He knows his failure to act properly human is in many ways due to that disconnect. James Novak was unwilling to offer assistance after his trickery and his cruelty and Castiel cannot blame the man. He caused him pain and he does not deserve the time he had in the man’s body, even though the impending Apocalypse and Castiel’s orders kept him from having much chance to acclimate peacefully. He had relied, instead, on his observations of the humans around him and the knowledge he had gained from his past excursions on Earth.

Humans, or at least James Novak, could not move like a cat. He lacked the proper musculature and bone structure to be truly graceful, and he had no tail to assist with either balance or speaking. Instead, Castiel found himself remaining stiff in his uncertainty, standing when he perhaps should have sat because he was not tired; staring too long as he studied someone because sixteen years was not long at all for an angel, but was a lifetime for a cat.

He has seen other angels tilt their head to study something. It lets their grace settle in the optic nerves of their vessels in just the right way to see things on a secondary plane, but he knows, too, that the position feels comfortable because Khamisi would look at things in the same way, and somewhere within his grace, a part of that cat is still there. May never leave. Has curled up in a warm armchair waiting for his human to come back.

Castiel also regrets not letting James Novak’s knowledge in because that human gentleness could have taught him so much. Could have taught him that things are not often as they appear and names are important and blades can kill but words will let your heart continue beating even as the rest of you dies. Human gentleness and empathy could have taught Castiel not to greet Sam Winchester by calling him “the boy with the demon blood.” He thinks it is only how startled he was by the flash of despair in hazel eyes that had him reaching out and taking the offered hand before Sam could pull away. And perhaps it was his grace without his mind’s forethought that reached out and sought the darkness he was sure was there in Sam’s soul, and saw none of it.

He thinks he could have learned so much if not for fear of humans. Thinks he would have learned less than his brothers and sisters had if not for a moment of fear that had him hiding in the soul of a kitten and learning human gentleness firsthand.

As he stands in the doorway to a room that had been a trap and a prison, Castiel thinks on human gentleness as he listens to Dean Winchester sing. He listens to a lullaby as it is sung to Castiel’s newest brother, who really isn’t new at all, because he made Sam Winchester his brother long before now, when he learned to be human and be gentle in his own way, after some (so many) failures. When he found a place here with these two brothers, a place that felt like _home_ , which he has not felt since he was lying on a woman’s chest listening to her hum a so-familiar tune into soft grey fur.

_Who were you?_ his mind calls out to the woman in his memory, as Dean’s lullaby swirls around him, echoing pain and peace and love. _My human. Where are you?_

_“My name is Eliana,”_ the little girl’s voice whispers in his memory, laughter shining out of bright green eyes, _“what’s yours?”_

_Khamisi_ , he thinks, with a fondness that hurts, and watches Dean stand carefully, Sam held in an experienced grip against his chest as he moves toward the door. Castiel steps to the side, raising a hand in offering. He will fly them wherever Dean wishes, desperate to do something to help, because he does not know what he can do. Wishes that James Novak’s mind was here to question, because Castiel’s is lost.

Dean only shakes his head and steps past him, continues down the hall. He goes a few feet before he looks back, his eyes questioning, and the confused line between his eyes reads _“Are you coming?”_ and eases something in Castiel’s chest that he had not realized was tight. He takes a step after them and Dean turns back around, continues walking.

Castiel follows like a silent shadow.

He does not know what else to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enthousiasmos (ἐνθουσιασμός) is a Greek word meaning "the state of being driven or guided by a higher power."
> 
> Art by the phenomenal Malaayna. Check out their tumblr for lots more amazing work.
> 
> So Castiel decided to get really talkative about his past in this chapter, so we're breaking his chapter into two parts. We'll see more of him with Sam and Dean next chapter. 
> 
> _Khamisi_ is a Swahili name that means “born on Thursday.” 
> 
> _Eliana_ is a Hebrew name that means “my God has answered.” 
> 
> There are a lot of things going on under the surface in this chapter. If you have a suspicion or a theory, let me know what it is. :D Thanks for reading!


	8. Ikigai

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All angels have a purpose, a reason for being, that has shaped their perceptions across millennia. The Angel Guard are no different.

Nuriel has learned to be fast. Centuries of chasing fledglings across Heaven have taught her many things and speed is one of them. Too many times she has needed to sweep a stumbling fledgling into her arms before they could slip away from her hold or, more often than she dared to count, try to slip past Heaven’s gates and attempt flying outside of the safe areas. She has fond memories of all of the angels she helped raise from fledglings, although there are some she was more pleased to no longer have to chase. The skill has become rusty of late. Nuriel has not needed to chase fledglings in millennia, but it appears such things never truly fade from muscle memory.

Zadkiel’s grace is like moonlight, illusory and weightless. It reflects upon the world around him, shining on paths that others can take, rather than reaching out to grasp and pull at them. His grace is a guiding light that she remembers well from when he was a fledgling, a soft glow that left a trail behind him, the stretch of moonlight on the sea. She remembers then following a glimmering trail of gracelight into corners where a fledgling sat giggling, wings in tousled disarray but smile bright. Now, as her wings carry her from the bunker the humans call their home, Nuriel is dismayed to see that the gracelight path he has left behind him is not the gentle lapping reflection on the world. It is smeared across the world, staggered, pooled in some places and falling in staccato drips at others. Like blood dripping from the tip of a blade. Like lifeblood flowing from a gaping wound.

Time and space tremble beneath the rush of Nuriel’s wings as her grace latches on to the ruin of Zadkiel’s trailing path and she leaps after him.

She hears him before she sees him, and feels him sooner still. She has known the moon’s light to wax and wane and eclipse, but she has never known it to tremble. The trail of his grace bleeds an agony that makes her grace pool in her palm, the urge to call forth a blade tantamount, the feeling of danger and an enemy near at hand heavy in her heart. The further she follows his trail, the greater the agony grows, until it settles in the air like humidity. Her grace aches to fight and flee, but she forces herself instead to follow, and so she finds him where he had placed himself against the trunk of his favored tree, his feet braced against the branches and his head thrown back as he screams at the sky.

She cannot hear the words, they are not meant for her, but she can feel them. She can feel the way his grace trembles in the air, shuddering against the confines of his vessel. She does not know who he is calling out to, if it is to Michael or another of their brethren, but the tears on his vessel’s cheeks and the pain in his bleeding grace bring her to him as swiftly as a fledgling’s cry once called her close.

Sariel is there, she realizes only as she takes a position on a nearby branch, balanced in a way no human could have managed, her wings spread out behind her, like the tumbled folds of a blanket made from the softest of wools. Sariel is standing on a branch lower than Zadkiel, her attention on him and her grace humming with the tell-tale signs of private communication. She is speaking mind-to-mind with Zadkiel, but his own grace isn’t responsive to _her_. It reaches out beyond where they stood, on Earth or stretched across time and space. Nuriel tries to follow the voice, tries to track it, but it eludes her with ease, twisting away like an illusion. She is left reaching for nothing and her grace curdles like sour milk within her.

 **“Zadkiel,”** she starts, tries to reach out to him, but he interrupts with a snap of wings like clouds tearing across the sky, blinding her to the moonlight she’s grown so accustomed to having at her side even in so short a time as they have been stationed here. It is not unlike those first few moments of chaos, when the fledgling’s cries first tore through their minds. Zadkiel’s grace had been an eclipse of emotion, the moonlight a mere shadow against the background of an emotional maelstrom. Nuriel had difficulty reading it then and is finding it nearly as impossible now.

 **“We do not…”** Zadkiel’s voice broke off and he shook himself, his wings fluttering to settle his grace. It did little to help. Nuriel’s own grace throbbed with a dull ache where the eruption of the humans’ wards had sent them careening into darkness and a silence too profound to think on. They had been at opposite sides of the bunker when they’d heard Michael’s call to retreat and fled to another plane, pushing themselves to get away from the bunker they could feel Michael and Sariel retreating from. Nuriel is certain that, had Michael and later Raphael not made sure their grace and wings were in peak condition, the resulting attack on them would have been exponentially worse. Even so, Nuriel can see the twisted, disarranged feathers of Sariel’s wings, and Zadkiel’s were scattered with splotches of grey clouds and void space. She ached to see them so, ached to reach out and fix them, but she can already feel his grace railing against her. She had never seen him angry before.

 **“What do we not, Zadkiel?”** Sariel’s tone was blunt but her attention is on her brother. Nuriel remembers her, of course, but she was a fledgling prone to doing as she was told. Not a prankster or a troublemaker like some more memorable members of the host, Sariel was quiet, direct, and obedient. Little has changed, it seems, but her concern, however tamped down, was reassuring. She was Michael’s top lieutenant for a reason, after all, and in a healed Heaven, that would mean more than leading armies into battle. Heaven was meant first to protect, to heal. That required soldiers wielding more than just blades.

 **“We do not deserve Sam Winchester!”** Zadkiel snapped out, his voice cracking. **“We have never deserved him, but to call him _brother_? We are not worthy of it.” **

Nuriel does not understand. There is more going on here than she is privy to and she knows it, but she does not know how to ask when Zadkiel’s grace is shining like moonlight on a cold mountain peak, glimmering beautiful and deadly cold.

 **“Then perhaps it is in our best interests that we _become_ worthy.” ** Sariel continues to stare at Zadkiel until the younger angel gives a soft nod. He doesn’t ease. His grace remains a battlefield of jagged edges and it is obvious he does not wish to be offered comfort, so despite her misgivings, her wants, Nuriel forces her own grace to retreat.

 **“What can I do?”** She is not certain who she is asking. Sariel is their superior and leading this mission, but for all of that, Zadkiel is the one she feels has the lead here. She glances briefly at Sariel, uncertain. The other angel is looking up at the sky with distant eyes, but she must feel Nuriel’s gaze because she meets her eyes. Nuriel watches as Sariel straightens, assuming command.

 **“Michael will wish a report. I will return to Heaven briefly to inform him of what has occurred with the humans.”** So Zadkiel must have relayed to her that the fledgling was free from the trap that held him. **“Raphael may need your assistance, Nuriel. Gabriel was unable to escape the wards.”** Nuriel startles. Gabriel was struck by them full-force? She fears what they might have done to him, as powerful as they were against her grace when she was fleeing. Her grace reaches out, seeking out both The Messenger and The Healer, and she winces when she feels the way Gabriel’s grace slides _wrong_ against hers.

Her wings flutter, anxious to go to them and offer her assistance, but her eyes turn back to Zadkiel. Before she can ask, he shakes his head. **“I will guard the humans. Sariel will not be long and Raphael could use your help.”**

Still, Nuriel reaches out a hand and touches Zadkiel’s shoulder briefly in comfort. Even through so small a touch, she can feel grief writhing beneath the surface of his grace. He only offers her a smile, however strained it is, and Nuriel lets her wings carry her to Raphael. The Healer has his grace wrapped around the youngest archangel in a hold meant to keep him steady, but Gabriel’s grace is practically vibrating in his hold, twisting and writhing in an attempt to escape that didn’t seem wholly conscious.

Nuriel’s own grace reaches out, curling around Gabriel’s side. She is so much smaller than he is, seraphs tiny in comparison to the raw power and size of an archangel, but she spreads her grace like a blanket against his side and does her best to hold him steady. It seems to help.

**“Are you injured?”**

Gabriel mumbled something incoherent, which is more startling to her than the state of his grace. As The Messenger, Gabriel was crafted to be able to communicate. That he was struggling to do so was terrifying.

 **“He is merely addled,”** Raphael soothes. His own grace stretches like a mountain down which he is carefully guiding his younger brother. **“The wards did not take kindly to his dismantling them.”**

 **“N’shit, Sh’lock,”** Gabriel mumbled, and then began giggling. **“How doeeen, Nuh…”** His grace snapped in irritation, wind banging against glass, and Nuriel automatically reached out and smoothed her own grace against his.

**“I am uninjured. Michael was able to warn us in time enough to escape the immediate blast radius. We only suffered the effects of blinding.”**

**“Yes,”** Raphael said, and behind his voice echoed a rockslide of emotion, an unvoiced memory of loss. Between them, Gabriel let out a whine, his grace reaching out for them clumsily. Nuriel barely managed to avoid being swatted away like a fly. Raphael reached out and clasped the grasping tendrils of their brother’s flailing grace. **“Be still, brother. Let us get you back into your vessel where you’ll have some semblance of control.”**

 **“Raph,”** Gabriel hissed out, his voice aching, and Nuriel had heard the wind howl before but never like this. **“M’sorry. M’so sorry.”**

 **“Calm yourself, little hummingbird,”** Raphael murmured and Nuriel looked away from the way their grace intertwined in a touch that, in vessels, might have translated as foreheads pressed together. **“We are both here _now_.” ** The wind howled between them. **“So let us get you home.”**

* * *

He is the Angel of Mercy and Compassion. For millennia, he has been in charge of directing prayers to their recipients. Prayers with an angel’s name in them would go directly to that angel, but those without a spoken or thought designation would come to his place in Heaven. Prayers to the Heavens or prayers to God and, later, prayers to angels who had been lost would find their way to Zadkiel and he would send them where they needed to go. In his own lesser way, he was a messenger – lower-case, of course. But he was the sorter of unlabeled prayers and he spent his days and nights in Heaven listening to the myriad of voices echoing from Heaven, wishing and begging and pleading for… so many things.

There are so many voices in his head all the time, a constant influx of murmurings that never cease. They had been louder and softer throughout the centuries, the belief in Father and his children waxing and waning like the moon, but always there were prayers to be heard, to be sent on to those who could assist with them. The stories spoken to him in unfamiliar voices would bring forth images of his brothers and sisters as he listened, determined who to send them to. Sometimes, he would send the prayers to more than one angel, if someone sought both protection and hope, healing and peace. Hearing the voices, the wishes, of humans made him aware of them on a different level from his brothers and sisters. He learned, early on, why his Father made him as he did. Compassion was necessary when dealing with these humans, who could hurt so easily and so much. Mercy was necessary when dealing with these humans, who could so easily and thoughtlessly hurt others. But he has also seen mercy and compassion reflected back at him, as humans did the best they could. They were so _young_ , still just children struggling to find their place in the world, to discover why they were there.

Zadkiel has listened to a thousand different voices asking _Why am I here?_ and a thousand more calling out _Why did you make me like this?_ Questions to a God who did not answer, because humans were granted the free will to determine their own destinies, and the questions they asked were also theirs to answer.

There are names he remembers. All the names, really, perfect angel recall being what it is, but few that truly stuck with him – names that lingered through the days and nights without having to be called up, or voices that returned again and again, each prayer like a call to a friend. There have been times when he wished to answer, for these humans who whispered tales to him sometimes spoke as though he was not some elusive concept in the sky, but a friend, a dear friend, far away but so closely held, so deeply cherished. Sometimes it would take all the strength he had within him not to fly to Earth and offer comfort to a crying child in the dark.

But he remained in Heaven, passing on prayers, and things stayed the same for millennia, until Sam Winchester’s voice reached him that very first time.

_“Dear God…”_

The prayers he whispers over folded hands are not those that belong in the mind of a child.

_“Dad’s been gone almost a week and Dean’s worried ‘bout him. Can you please send a angel to watch over him so he can come home?”_

The prayers that Sam Winchester calls to God in a tooth-gapped lisp are horror stories to his ears.

_“Dear God…”_

_“We used all the money Dad gave us for food and I’m really hungry. Can you tell my dad to come home?”_

Sometimes, to his shame, he’d wished he didn’t have to listen.

_“Dear God…”_

_“I’m sorry I got scared of the monster in my closet. I know I’m s’posed to be brave. Can you tell my dad I said I’m sorry? He won’t answer his phone, but maybe he’ll listen to you? If he comes back home, I promise I won’t cry no more.”_

He had thought, more than once, of turning his grace off to Sam Winchester, so that his prayers wouldn’t be heard. After all, every angel knew who the boy was. At first, Zadkiel had sent the prayers on to the appropriate angels, but after a time, he realized they were being ignored, tossed aside. No one would answer the prayers of an abomination, so Zadkiel had stopped sending them on to others. He, alone, listened to the boy whisper useless prayers and, in the end, could never bring himself to turn away from them. Even if they would never be answered, the least the Zadkiel could do was listen.  

_“Dear God…”_

_“Dean got hurt real bad. Dad had to take him to the hospital. Can you please send an angel to watch over him and make sure he’s okay? Maybe you can send the one who watches over me? He always keeps me safe.”_

There was no angel watching over Sam Winchester. A byproduct of bloodline manipulations, the boy’s only purpose in life was to serve as a vessel. Zadkiel had heard words spoken by the higher angels, of the apocalypse and the Winchesters’ place in it. It would be started by the demons, of course, as all cruel things in the world were. Then Heaven would play their part and bring about paradise.

_“Dear God…”_

_“Dean says angels are watching over us. Is one of them my mom? Do you she could come down and visit my dad sometime, like an angel vacation? I know Dad misses her a lot, and so does Dean. And I… I’d really like to meet her.”_

Sometimes, Zadkiel wondered if they deserved paradise.

Sometimes, he still wonders how he didn’t Fall, listening to the whispered prayers of a little boy who, no matter his destiny, was a _child_. He had never doubted before that moment. Humans were interesting, yes, and their thoughts could be beautiful, but Zadkiel has heard terrible prayers, as well. He had heard prayers wishing death on others. He had heard prayers from men and women about doing terrible things to children. He had listened as humans prayed for the bloody ruin of those different from them and for the ones they had once loved so deeply to suffer. He has heard many a bright prayer from the mouth of a child, and many more aching ones asking for help, but Sam Winchester’s prayers were different. Sam Winchester’s prayers were _never_ answered, and yet still he prayed.

_“Dear God…_

_“Sometimes I worry I’m disappointing everyone. Dad, Dean, even Mom. I’m trying my best, you know, I am, but sometimes, I just want to feel normal. Is that so wrong?”_

_“Dear God…_

_“I got into a really bad fight with my dad. I just… I love him but sometimes I think he’d be happier if I wasn’t around.”_

_“Dear God…_

_“Am I… am I_ bad _?”_

_“Dear God…_

_“If something… if I did something… nevermind. I shouldn’t… I know you’re busy.”_

_“Dear God…_

_“You’d take care of Dean, right? If I wasn’t here?”_

_“Dear God…_

_“Please take care of Dean for me. If you can, let him know I love him. I just… it’s not his fault, okay? And… sorry. I’m sorry.”_

Zadkiel remembers that the prayers stopped. It was only for a few human years – a very short time for an angel, less than a blink, had angels needed to blink – and he would have thought, had he been asked, that it would be a relief.

Instead, the silence was terrifying.

Zadkiel hadn’t realized how accustomed he had become to hearing Sam Winchester’s prayers. Hearing his voice. It had become a constant in days of prayer-sorting and delivering. Sam _always_ had prayers, and sometimes they concerned his father, and sometimes himself, but most often, they concerned Dean. Dean, who Zadkiel knew was destined to be Michael’s vessel but who, in Zadkiel’s mind, had become Sam’s brother _first_. It should have been terrifying, but instead it just seemed right somehow.

Until the silence.

Until Zadkiel heard Dean’s voice for the first time since he was a child.

 _“Uh… shit, I haven’t done this… fuck, okay. God? Right, you’re supposed to be all-seeing or some shit… you’re supposed to be able to fix anything, right? You’re God. I… fuck.”_ Zadkiel remembered sitting very still, turning his ears off to all other prayers and letting them play out into his grace for him to listen to later, as he focused all his attention on the stumbling, curse-ridden prayer by Sam’s brother. _“Sam’s hurt. He… he’s hurt bad and I… I don’t know what… I can’t… please. Please, I’ll do anything, just… just make him better. He’s my little brother and I’m supposed to protect him and I… I need him. So… Amen… or something.”_

Zadkiel hadn’t looked to see what had hurt Sam. He hadn’t wanted to know. A part of him then had been sure that if he _had_ looked, he would be the angel who turned against Heaven in favor of the Winchesters, because both of them had been without angels their whole lives, and there was something terribly wrong with that. Perhaps he wouldn’t have thought so if not for his place, if not for the prayers. If he was not the Angel of Mercy and Compassion, then perhaps Zadkiel would have cared as little as every other angel seemed to, but he was who he was, and so he could not help but care.

Sam’s prayers had never been answered, so Zadkiel had stopped sending them out. But he couldn’t bear to destroy them, to make it as though they had never been, these wishes and dreams and hopes of a small child whose destiny was to end everything. So Zadkiel took every one of the prayers Sam Winchester spoke and he wrapped them in grace, tucked them away in a box and kept them hidden and safe. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know what purpose they could bring when the only time he opened the box was to add another prayer, but he kept them just the same. Compassion, he supposed, that they not be forgotten.

Dean’s prayer Zadkiel cradled in his hands as it finished, as he felt the connection wither as the older Winchester brother retreated. He held it tight within his grace and thought about locking it away in the box where he kept all of Sam’s prayers, but this prayer… this prayer was special. Sam prayed every day, spoke to God – spoke to _Zadkiel_ – every night. But Dean? Dean hadn’t prayed since the night of the fire that killed his mother. Until this moment. Until his brother needed him to.

This was not a prayer to tuck away out of the light of Heaven. It was a prayer to be answered. A prayer to be heard.

But by who?

Zadkiel did not answer prayers. He had walked with the Reapers once, long ago, called by those who lay in fields of blood, pleading for Mercy. He had offered compassion in the end, as the Reapers drew their souls in. But that had been long ago and the kind of mercy Zadkiel had once offered was not what Dean asked for.

But he was asking for _Sam_. No angel would answer a prayer for Sam Winchester, he had learned that lesson well. And yet… he couldn’t _not_ send it on. His grace wouldn’t let him tuck the prayer away or tear it from existence. Dean’s despair roiled from the prayer like sickness, like a festering wound, like a scream for help.

In the end, he did get a box. Crafted from his grace, it was the tiniest thing, so small it would hardly be noticed. Painted with Compassion, kissed with Mercy, Zadkiel tucked Dean’s prayer inside and closed the box, sealed it, wrapped it as tightly within his grace as he could, and then… he prayed.

He sent Dean’s prayer off into the universe, his prayer twisting through his grace, trying to reach out to some point beyond him, trying to touch something he had never even seen. Trying to make someone see that this, _this_ was important and please… please, would someone else look, would someone else listen and hear what Zadkiel could hear.

Please. Would someone else just listen.

* * *

Sariel’s wings ached with a dull throb that came from knowing the feeling of her grace being right and how it was so different from its present, twisted state. Perhaps later, when this crisis was over with and they were sure Gabriel’s flock was safe, Sariel would be able to take the time to fix her wings and those of her team. For now, however, she could only push the pain to the back of her mind as she made her way to Heaven’s gates. Michael would want a report.

Her feet carried her swiftly through Heart Hall as she made her way to Michael’s office. The angels were calmer than she had expected after the fledgling’s cries. If they had been enough to bring Michael running, she knew that they reached Heaven. If his cries had been anywhere near as painfully loud as they had been for Sariel, she would not be surprised if The Garden was now host to some in search of peace.

She had never been a creature prone to heavy emotion. Her fledgling-hood in Heaven had been a serious one. Other angels, like Gabriel, liked their tricks and games, but Sariel had always preferred order and strict guidelines. She was a daughter of duty and she appreciated the sense of fulfillment she received from completing a job to the best of her capabilities. That had not changed as she aged. Sariel knew that she appeared standoffish to many of her brethren who were more emotional of nature, and cold to others, but it had never been a large concern for her. She was Michael’s chief lieutenant and the very best at her job. Her ability to continue performing a task regardless of the emotional implications was what made her the best in the fleet.

That serious devotion to duty had not made listening to the fledgling’s cries easy, however. The first scream, the cry of his older brother’s name, had taken all three of them by surprise. Sariel had known, had well-remembered, that Nuriel was faster than she was, even now when their wings stretched to equal size. That didn’t make it any less surprising when the angel rocketed past her, wings stretched across the sky like great cumulus clouds. Her speed had done nothing to get her into the humans’ bunker, however. All three of them had tried but that had slid off the wards like raindrops on a windshield. Nuriel, stubborn angel that she was, had gone in search of cracks in the wards. Zadkiel, his face pale in a way Sariel knew to be unhealthy, had ignored her orders to rest and gone instead to try and communicate to one of the members of the flock within the bunker. Sariel had returned to the tree she used most often as a lookout post, waiting for the arrival of Michael, who had begun to speak to her. She had kept a close eye on Zadkiel. She’d believed at the time that the younger angel had been injured by the wards. It should have occurred to her that his compassion and mercy, the very things she had chosen him for, would make him more susceptible to the fledgling’s emotional state.

Zadkiel’s distress had grown worse as the fledgling’s cries continued. The fact that most of the screams were too loud to be understood didn’t seem to matter. Her grace followed her younger brother as the angel circled the bunker, seeking a place where his voice would reach those within, as his grace became steadily dimmer with each moment that passed. Sariel didn’t understand what he was reacting to, because even when there was silence, Zadkiel’s grace seemed to… to bleed.

She had been mildly distracted by Michael, especially when the fledgling’s cries had made her cringe, tearing at her grace. She had pulled in, trying to regroup herself, distressed by her own weakness (how could she do her job to Michael’s standards if a simple cry incapacitated her?). When the wards fell, everything that was keeping Zadkiel from communicating with the humans and Nuriel from slipping into the bunker disappeared, and for just a moment, Sariel’s grace had found Sam. The fledgling.

Sam.

For just a moment, she had touched him, and the level of despair and grief within the child stole the air from her vessel’s lungs. She didn’t even remember leaping from the tree. One moment she was communicating with Michael and the next she was halfway across the yard, with her commander crashing into her and yanking her away. Sariel was certain she owed Michael her life. If Gabriel’s apparent state was anything to go by, she would not likely have survived the full force of the wards striking her. She could only be grateful for her commander’s care and that Gabriel and his flock were not terribly damaged by the wards.

Her thoughts travelled back to Zadkiel. She did not like leaving her younger brother to guard the flock alone. She knew Nuriel was there and Raphael was uninjured, but her place would always be on the front lines of the battlefield, no matter the form it took. She hoped her report to Michael would be swiftly given and received. For all her seriousness, she was not uncaring, and the state of her brother’s grace and mind set her ill at ease. She would be there for him as much as she could, in whatever capacity he would accept – be that sister or merely his superior. She would be able to keep an eye on him either way and that was what mattered.

Family.

It seemed the Winchesters had it right all along.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ikigai_ is a Japanese word that means "a reason to get up in the morning; a reason to live." 
> 
> Cumulus clouds are the great “fluffy” and “cotton-like” clouds you’ll see in the sky. They tend to linger low in the altitude and are often indicative of low weather


	9. Cafuné

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is Dean real or is he dead? Does Castiel want to kill him or protect him? Is everything Mammon says true or is it all lies? Sam is so confused, so tired, and so, so scared.

He should leave.

He is causing nothing but harm by remaining in the room.

Dean had, as Castiel knew he would, carried Sam to the nest. Cas had turned down the blankets already in preparation and Dean hadn’t hesitated in climbing onto the bed. He had thought Dean might put Sam down first, but as he watched the older Winchester brother struggle onto the bed without the use of his arms, he realized that putting Sam down would likely not have turned out well. Besides that, he could see the white knuckles of Sam’s small fingers as he clutched Dean’s collar. Castiel suspected even he would have struggled to remove Sam’s hands and that wasn’t worth a fight.

Instead, Dean fairly collapsed on the bed, perhaps the easiest way to maneuver himself onto the mattress, still clutching Sam to his chest. He’d rolled over, placing his little brother in the center of the bed, as far from either edge as he could manage, and all but wrapped himself around Sam, tucking his legs up until the tops of his thighs were touching Sam’s feet. Castiel did not think the position could have been comfortable. Sam was curled up tightly against Dean’s chest, his own knees folded up, and Dean had to contort himself quite tightly in order to wrap himself so succinctly around his brother.

For a moment, Castiel found himself likening Dean to Smaug, the great dragon beast of _The Hobbit,_ a trio of movies Gabriel had recently forced he and Raphael to sit through as the rest of the flock were sleeping. Dean was, by no means, the antagonist in the story of their lives – or in his Father’s _Winchester Gospels_ , where Sam and Dean were accurately portrayed as the heroes Castiel knew them to be – but Dean’s temper was notorious and his protective tendencies toward his brother well-known and even better-feared. He could be called possessive, if one looked properly, of guns or good music (or pie, Dean might perhaps suggest), but Castiel rather suspected that if Dean were given to hoarding treasure, it would be in the form of moments in his life where his little brother laughed and smiled.

Castiel loved him for that. No one who did not know the Winchester intimately, as so few were able to boast, would ever call Dean gentle, but Cas knew better. The elder of the brothers was fiercely protective and often threw his attitude around, much like a stallion would toss its head to assert dominance and control. It looked fierce, _was_ fierce, and dangerous, but beneath the posturing and the threats, there lay a man with the brightest soul Castiel had ever lain eyes on, who could be so gentle with those he loved it was enough to bring angels to tears. He would know.

Of all the people Dean cared about, Samuel would always be at the very top of the list. Castiel was ashamed that he had once disagreed with the rightness of that, when he had first met the youngest brother and still viewed him as the abomination he had been named. Now he knew better and he knew the brothers better. That Sam was Dean’s priority was never in question, would never be in question. Perhaps it was terrifying how far Dean would go to keep his brother safe and alive, but would any parent do differently? And when it came down to it, that was the truth. They were brothers, yes, but Heaven had followed the Winchesters from their birth, knew their story, and so Castiel knew that it was Dean, not John, who had raised Sam. Brothers, yes, but it could never be denied that Dean was also Sam’s parent. Father didn’t have any good connotations for the brothers, unfortunately. Guardian, however…

Castiel smiled sadly to himself. Yes. How ironic. Heaven had prevented – refused – to give either of the Winchesters assistance as they grew. They were granted no answers to their prayers, no divine intervention, no care or love – nothing but disdain and a belief that the purpose of their existence was as a vessel. They did not, to Castiel’s shame, even rank as true souls in the eyes of he and his brothers and sisters. So of course, if they could not even be granted such a small kindness as being considered _a soul_ , they would not be granted a guardian to watch over them.

But Sam Winchester had received one nonetheless.

Cas felt the love in his chest build as he looked over the brothers, Sam with his face pressed into the hollow of his brother’s throat and Dean with his nose buried in Sam’s hair. Neither of the Winchester brothers had been granted a guardian angel, and so Dean Winchester had become one for his brother, protecting him, guiding him, and caring for him as he grew.

His greatest regret in that moment was that it took orders and a mission to bring him to the Winchesters. He should have been here long ago, standing over Dean when he was but a child and not a grown man. Castiel was their friend and he would consider them family – consider them _brothers_ – for as long as his grace continued to burn within him, but he would also consider them his charges. Sam Winchester had been given a guardian angel in his brother, and Castiel had finally come to be Dean’s.

He closed his eyes and offered a prayer of thanks to his father for what he believed was the most important mission he would ever undertake. Maybe one day he would be worthy of it.

* * *

“You know this can’t last.”

Sam kept his eyes closed, his face pressed against warm skin. He could feel his brother breathing against him, every rise and fall of his chest a promise and a relief. Sam’s fingers clung to the collar of Dean’s shirt – he didn’t think he could let go if he wanted to – and the smell of _Dean_ lingered in the air, gun oil and leather. It was his brother. It _was_ Dean.

“Come on, Sam, you know better than that.”

No. No, he was right here.

“Dean’s dead.”

He clamped his teeth down over his bottom lip to stifle a whimper, pressed his nose hard against Dean’s collarbone. Dean grunted at the pressure, but then his brother’s arms tightened around him and pulled him closer. Sam’s breath stuttered out of him raggedly and he felt the burn of tears as his eyes filled again. This was _real_ . It _had_ to be real.

“Then why don’t you test it, Sammy? What’s your little trick – digging your fingers into your palm? It hurts, right? Lets you know what’s real?” He could hear footsteps moving about the room, tried to ignore the fact that Dean wasn’t reacting to someone else being there. He couldn’t see them, right? Only Sam could. That was why. That was why Dean didn’t react. “Why aren’t you testing it, Sammy? Why aren’t you _making sure_?” He felt Mammon’s breath against the back of his neck, not warm but ice cold. Like winter. Like Lucifer.

“It’s because you already know.”

The tears slid down Sam’s cheeks and he didn’t try to stop them. He let them fall from his chin and drip onto the T-shirt in his grasp.

“This isn’t real. It never was. It’s a good illusion, I’ll give you that. You’re almost as good as Gabriel is. Well… _was_.”

Sam sucked in a breath, tried to ignore the words, but he could remember. The grace that flooded the room after… when his mom… the grace had been Gabriel’s. He’d felt it, like wind, thick and hot as an incoming storm bursting through the room, and the honey-gold light of Gabriel’s fathomless grace rushing across his skin. He’d felt the room open, like a lock had been broken, and Mammon had been washed away like dust by the force of Gabriel’s power.

And then… him just lying there. Gabe’s vessel, his body, just lying there covered in dust and debris, and it was _wrong_ for Gabe to be so still. Gabe was _never_ still. And then Dean. But… but not Dean.

But…

Sam’s lips quivered on a silent cry. If Gabriel was dead, then how was Dean there when he wasn’t? Or was Gabriel really alive and Sam didn’t know because he’d made Dean real here first and left the archangel outside of it? Was his mom really dead or was she okay? And Cas… was Cas…?

Cas _was_ here.

He had been in the room when Dean entered. Sam had caught sight of him standing on the other side of the room, and for a while he had watched the angel, unsure of what he would do. The last time he had seen him, Cas had been trying to kill him, because Sam had… he’d hurt Dean.

He’d _killed_ Dean.

But Dean was _here_ and Cas was… he was…

_Castiel opened his mouth in a scream, light bursting from his mouth and burning through his eyes, as a blade erupted from his chest. Those wings, black and iridescent, flashed across his vision, bright black. The drop of his body to the ground was loud, but not nearly as loud as the hissing burn of his wings as their forms seared into perfect clarity across the floor._

Cas was dead.

But he was here.

Sam’s fingers twitched on Dean’s collar, desperate to press into the soft flesh of his palm, to know.

What was real? Was this real?

Or were they really gone?

_“How could you do this?”_

Sam’s breath burst out of him in a sob. He felt the rumble of words in Dean’s chest but couldn’t hear what he was saying over his own heavy breaths and broken cries. He needed this to be real. He needed Dean to be here. He needed _Cas_ …

Without thinking about it, words tumbled over his lips, muttered into the warm flesh of his brother’s real-not-real throat. He felt the tears hot on his cheeks as he spoke, heard Mammon whisper, icy breath on his neck as he spoke of illusions and lies and tricks of a broken mind, but his prayer continued, spoken in desperation and heartbreak and a choking, deadly need for this to be _real_.

Please. Please. If it wasn’t real… if this was just an illusion and Dean was really gone, then let him die here and now, because he couldn’t bear another moment in this world without his brother. Better to be gone, to be Nothing, than to be in a world without Dean.

* * *

Sam had started crying again.

Castiel knew the youngest angel was aware of his presence. He had not been blind to bloodshot hazel eyes watching him from over Dean’s shoulder as the older Winchester brother stalked into the room like an angry jungle cat. He had hoped sitting in the corner and remaining still – as still as an angel could, which was better even than a statue could manage – would ease Sam’s mind but still allow him to watch them. He knew that Dean would keep Sam safe, but Castiel did not want to leave. He wanted to be close, felt a need to be near Sam, to offer what help he could, even if it was only his presence.

He could feel the pain and fear rolling off Sam like cold wafting from ice and he knew he couldn’t stay. Not if this was the sort of reaction he was going to cause. He wanted to help and if the only help he could offer was leaving, then he would do so. Not gladly, but… for Sam, he would go.

His mind reached out, his grace seeking his brothers, wondering if Raphael had yet returned Gabriel to his vessel, when his name registered. As with all angels, prayers directed to them with their names came directly to them and Castiel’s grace turned from his brother’s, instinctively reaching out, grasping at the prayer, taking it into himself.

The gasp of surprise was the first breath he had uttered since deciding to remain still and silent in the corner, but he could not help it, for it was Sam’s voice and grace that flowed through his, warm, thrumming with a current, like the hum of a fluorescent bulb during a dark night, offering a light to see by.

“Beloved Castiel, Angel of Thursday,” Sam’s voice whispered over the humming of his grace, “who has guarded and guided us all days, who stands beside us and is with us, who has carried us and raised us from perdition, may your grace shine, bright and strong. May your wings carry you fast and far and your name be known across the world as the angel who stands with humans, who has Fallen and died for humanity, who loves and is loved deeply.”

“Sam,” Cas breathed. He had touched this child’s soul and soothed fingers through his grace and yet the depth of emotion within this prayer was like diving into the Mariana Trench after splashing through puddles.

“Please forgive me all my failings, for I have tried hard to be good and kind. Please have mercy on the unworthy soul before you, who has wished for love too hard and has hurt all those who he would call family. Please forgive me, for I have hurt… for I have…”

The sob brought Castiel to his feet, sounding as though it shattered its way out of Sam’s throat. Dean lay with his back to the door, himself between his brother and anyone who would enter, and so Castiel could not see Sam from where he stood. The prayer, tethered to him by will and grace and an agony Castiel wanted to release the child from, was a line that tugged him closer, and Castiel did not fight it.

“I have killed those I loved. I have done terrible things… terrible things and I don't deserve… I don’t deserve forgiveness. I don’t…”

The prayer raked across Castiel’s grace like razorblades, suddenly _wrong_ in a way it hadn’t been. The gentle hum of warm light that had begun the prayer had turned sharp, dark and cold. The words were still Sam’s, and they still flowed through his grace, but there was something behind them, twisting them into darkness and ice. Castiel knew the taste of Sam’s prayers and for all that he had once called him the boy with the demon blood, Sam’s prayers had never tasted like rot. There was something cold and wet, something _slippery_ in the way the prayer slid through his grace, and it was so _wrong_ that Castiel’s blade manifested in his hand without him having called it.

His grace rushed forward at Sam and he felt the child cringe away, felt the youthful grace cower like a wounded animal waiting to be struck, and he knew that Sam recognized his grace, recognized _him_ , and thought… thought he would…

##  **“Please, please, no!”**

Castiel pulled away, instinct and shame driving him back. Sam thought he would hurt him. Sam believed that _he_ would hurt him.

Grief like a cloud of smog filled his chest and he pulled his grace in even as he turned, wings fluttering, to fly, to _flee_ , somewhere, anywhere else but here, where he would not harm Sam. Where he would not hurt Sam simply by _being_.

He was half-gone when something slithered against his grace.

The feel of it, oily and sick, almost flung Castiel across the world. He felt his own grace wail in horror, images crashing through his mind like shards of glass scattering reflected light. Black water, brackish on the tongue, bit at his grace. He heard the high song of a blue whale, a brother, recede and falter, fall into darkness. He tasted oil and blood, thick in his throat, and smelled fire and chemical smoke. Sharp needle-like fangs sank into his grace, pain spreading like ice from bites across his body, and the slick feel of wet scales as something slithered against him, tentacles… eels… a thousand of them, writhing like worms in damp earth, like snakes in a pit, hissing and spitting poison and…

##  **“Cas, please! Cas!”**

It would not occur to him until later that this, the second time he heard Sam cry out to him, for him to please, _please something_ , was not the broken, frightened cry he had heard before. Not a cry filled with terror of him, but one for him. A call to arms, a cry for help. A prayer. Samuel Winchester, newest angel, younger brother, crying out to Castiel, the Angel of Thursday, for help.

Castiel had once cried out for help. He had received it in the form of a human woman he had no name for, who had soft hands and a gentle voice, whose lips kissed his head like they were offering benediction.

To a kitten.

To an angel.

Castiel had once received an answer to _his_ prayers from a human.

It felt right, then, to reciprocate to this child, who had been born of humanity and had always exhibited their greatest traits.

His grace unfolded from his back, great wings, black as the world before his Father had thought to craft stars, yet shimmering with every color that would ever cross the world, however long it lasted. His grace filled the room, the shadow of his wings covering the walls until they had blocked out the lights, and within the darkness of his grace’s great shadow, Castiel opened his eyes and _looked_.

Hazel eyes met his over Dean’s shoulder and Castiel’s mind was filled with images that were not real. They. Were. Not. Real. But oh, they were so terribly realistic, so almost-true, so believable. Castiel watched as Dean whispered apologies to a distraught Sam, trying to explain why he had to sell his soul. He watched as hellhounds tore at Dean, as Sam fought against them with new powers, with fierce angelic strength and a deadly kind of love. He watched as the terrific destruction of grace stole the life from Dean in a way that was so very possible, and he watched a version of him that was not-real, _was not real_ , took his grief and turned it against Sam. He watched this false version of himself die after speaking such terrible lies, and watched as Mary, who had become a mother to them all, died willingly for a son who was already so very broken.

He watched the illusion shatter around him under the force of Gabriel’s hurricane grace. He saw, from Sam’s eyes, his brother – Dean as he is now and Dean as he was, five years old and humming songs, then older and singing, watched him change through the years, lose his childhood in great sloughs of innocence. A part of Castiel wept as he watched both boys grow, Dean Winchester playing the part of guardian angel to his younger brother. He listened through Sam’s ears as Dean sang a song that had more meaning to both boys than he could ever have imagined, and he felt Sam’s terror that this moment – _this_ moment and not the terrible ones filled with death – was the one that wasn’t real.

Castiel pulled himself out of Sam’s mind, forced his grace to retreat gently, soothing the sparking edges of Sam’s wounded grace as he left. He drew an unnecessary breath meant to steady himself, a muscle-memory from time as a human or perhaps as a cat, and turned, his eyes bright blue in grace and fury.

With Sam’s fears still burning through his mind, his visions of that terrible room and the deaths that had occurred there, Castiel could see the form this creature had taken. Fear and hatred had manifested into the creature that Sam hated and feared the most.

Castiel wished it surprised him, but it only hurt to look at a body he had once held in his arms. He knew the name of the creature, spoken in Sam’s youthful voice. Mammon. Prince of Hell. Lord of Greed. If there was such a creature and it was not born simply from Sam’s vast knowledge of human theology and mythical supposition, it would not bear this face. Never this face.

The eyes were yellow, putrid, the color of sickness. The clothes were what modern society would call high-end, tailored by money, a representation of greed. But the face was Sam’s. Sam before his Father had come and offered healing. Sam as he had been when he was human, when he had faced such adversity as the demon blood addiction which still obviously haunted him now.

Castiel looked at the manifestation of whatever evil magic had latched onto Sam and felt like weeping. This was what Sam thought of himself in the deepest parts of his heart? When his fears were cut down to their base and his hatred was burned to bare embers, this was the face that was left? How could a human who held such kindness within his heart hate himself so much?

He stared at the demon – at Mammon – for a long moment, studying every line of that face, every intricacy, so he could tell Sam all the ways that he was _wrong_ . If he had to paint the sky with images of Sam’s crinkled, laughing eyes, then every sunset would carry his face from now until he’d proven to this child that he was _not_ a monster. He was _never_ a monster. Even when the demon blood had Sam in his throes, the boy had never been an abomination.

Mammon opened his mouth to spit his lies, but Castiel waved a hand and the creature’s form shuddered. “You are a lie,”  he said firmly, and stepped past the demon.

He felt it reach out, try to latch on to him, but he threw his wings out in defense and the beast recoiled, fading out of sight. Castiel sheathed his angel blade back in the depths of his grace and went to his knees by the bed. Sam’s back was to him but the boy’s head was turned so he could watch him out of the corner of his eye. Castiel could feel his grace, too, reading him with an understanding of grace mechanics that was staggering in one so young.

Castiel reached out slowly to soothe the grace of tangled wings and his heart ached as Sam recoiled from him, burying his face in Dean’s shirt and pulling his grace in until it rested like a tiny ball in the center of his chest, safely pressed against his brother’s heart.

Forcing himself to back away, no matter that his own grace demanded he take this injured child into his arms, Cas rested on his heels. His grace continuously scoured the room, wary of the demon’s return, and also certain that the danger had not dissipated in the least but only vanished from sight. The hair that ran down the arms of this vessel itched where they stood on end, a strange sensation he was uncertain if he had felt before. He was even more uncertain how he felt about the reaction - one this body seemed to do without conscious thought, and yet what was its purpose? It did not make him appear any larger, as the rising plume of a bird or the raised hair of a cat. In fact, it seemed to be nothing more than yet another distraction, and not one he found particularly enjoyable.

His hand ran down the length of his arm in a failed attempt to smooth down the hair and the strange marks that had appeared on his skin, like his pores had opened. This body could not release toxins into the air. Was he injured? Was this something he should be concerned about? Perhaps he should speak to Mary.

“Cas?”

The tremulous voice made Castiel’s head snap up in a manner that would have been painful if not for his grace there to ease the sudden movement. Sam had turned around in Dean’s arms without his noticing. He was resting his back against his brother’s chest, though Dean’s arms had tightened around Sam’s chest, holding him fast. Cas glanced up at Dean but found that the older Winchester brother was asleep, though there was still a tight line of worry across his forehead that even unconsciousness could not ease.

Something niggled in the back of Cas’s mind, a worry he could not put voice to, and he looked down at his arms again, frowning. The strange bumps had gotten worse and the light-colored hairs on his arms stood even further on end. He thought he could even feel them on his neck and his wings shuddered at the sensation.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked, and Cas looked up at him in surprise. The boy’s voice was steady but there was a wariness in his eyes that told of uncertainty. He was still unsure of Castiel’s response to him, still fearful, but the fact that he was communicating at all suggested that he was uncertain of that previous reality. Castiel could not be more grateful for Sam’s vast intelligence, that he was trying to think through it, was willing to even consider that what he had seen before was false.

“Cas?” Sam asked again, this time with a shiver in his voice. He realized that he had been silent too long when he was expected to answer.

“I apologize, Sam. My body appears to be having some sort of adverse reaction. I am concerned I may be injured.”

Sam peered at him, searching for an injury, and Castiel obligingly raised his arms. Sam stared at his arms for a long moment, a frown on his lips, before he looked at Cas’s face. “Where are you injured?”

“My arms.” Castiel pointed at the white bumps that had spread from wrist to elbow. “My grace is not sensing illness, and yet this is not the normal state of this body. I may need to speak with Raphael.”

“Those are just goosebumps.”

Sam said it as though it should mean something but Castiel did not recall anything in Metatron’s download that would explain this. “I don’t understand, Sam. I am not a goose.” He had never even settled his grace inside a goose. How could he have contracted bumps from them?

The giggle Sam let out was like bells and bright summer sunshine. Castiel’s grace rejoiced to hear it. “No, it’s… goosebumps are what we called them as kids. I forget what they’re really called. It’s something that happens when our adrenaline triggers a fight-or-flight response. It makes all the hairs on your arms stand on end.”

“Yes. I noticed that was happening, as well.”

Sam’s grin was wry and wonderful. “You’re not sick, Cas. It’s totally normal.”

“I see.” He ran a hand over his arm again, mildly disturbed that it did nothing to quell the strange sensation. “What are they called _goosebumps_?”

“I don’t know.” Sam looked thoughtful, like this was a mystery he suddenly very much wanted to solve. After a moment, however, he came back to himself, his eyes warily studying Cas’s face.

“Are you really here?”

“I believe so.” Sam frowned, and so Cas added, “I am certain that I am real, and that you and Dean are equally real. We are all three of us here in this room, although technically I am also on multiple planes due to my grace not being a construct that humans can survive seeing.”

Sam flinched and looked away and Cas remembered that terrible vision, the sight of Dean with his eyes burned out.

He reached out slowly and this time Sam didn’t pull away. Castiel’s fingers brushed at the curls that covered Sam’s head, so different from the hair he had as an adult, and he felt Sam sigh beneath him.

“I am sorry that we were unable to get to you sooner,” he said, his fingers weaving through Sam’s grace, smoothing errant feathers. He felt Sam relax under his touch and was so very grateful to his Father. “I wish you hadn’t had to suffer as you did.”

Sam sniffled. His hands were still clenched tight, pressed against his chest, but they seemed to be loosening as he relaxed. Cas didn’t push him, simply allowed his grace to soothe that of this child in his care.

For a long time, there was silence between the two of them, the only sound Dean’s light snoring and Sam’s breathing, interspersed with an occasional catch as Cas fixed a particularly tangled bit of grace. Castiel allowed his mind to wander, his grace basking in the gentle touch between him and his youngest brother. He had moved to Sam’s other wing before the boy finally spoke.

“It was just like Mystery Spot.”

Castiel’s hands stilled briefly but he forced himself to keep moving, to keep his touch gentle. He had heard of Mystery Spot. Dean had been loud and angry and incredibly vocal about it after the confrontation that sparked the Winchesters learning that the Trickster they had previously encountered was actually the archangel Gabriel. Sam had not been invited to join in on that conversation. Dean had actually waited until his younger brother had gone off to get food before he practically exploded with fury.

Although Dean had revealed that Sam had not been in a good place after the time loop that Gabriel had created, Castiel understood that he was not being told the full story. At the time, he had believed it was solely because Dean did not have the full story. _He_ was not the one who had been a part of the time loop, his own memory being erased at every reset. Now, looking back, he understood that while that remained true, there were things he hadn’t been told simply because Dean had not yet trusted him. Not like he did now.

Castiel wondered what Sam would have to say if he were to ask him what significance a mystery spot had to current events, but the emotion in Sam’s voice, the way his wings curled forward as though to wrap around him in self-comfort, suggested that Sam was no more over the events of that time loop than he was this most recent trauma in his life. Instead, Castiel remained silent, hoping that would not suggest to Sam that he did not care. He smoothed his hand down the edges of Sam’s wings, easing them back from where they tried to curl in front of him. It was difficult enough to reach every grace-feather with Sam facing him, but he preferred to be able to see Sam’s face, no matter that his grace ached at the tears in hazel eyes.

“They just… they kept dying. E-everyone,” Sam whispered, and Castiel was grateful that Sam trusted him enough to continue. “Only this time, _I_ was killing them. Dean and Mom and… and you…”

Cas smoothed a last feather into place and then leant down until his nose was nearly touching Sam’s. He heard the boy gasp, felt him pull away, but his wings fluttered open in surprise, and Castiel saw no fear in those eyes. Not of him.

“You did not kill me,” he said firmly, hands coming up to smooth Sam’s curls. “You did not kill your brother and you did not kill your mother. Not now, and not _before_.” He watched as tears slipped from Sam’s eyes and felt the chasm of grief that swelled in the boy’s heart. Grief and disbelief. Castiel wanted to go back in time and punch himself in the face. Wanted to raize Heaven to the ground. How could a child blame himself so much that the weight of the world was a burden he felt obligated to bear?

“When I found you in the Cage, I touched your soul, as I once touched your brother’s. I did not succeed in bringing it with me, and I can never make up for failing to save all of you that day. But I did touch your soul, Samuel Winchester. I saw _you_.”

Hands cradling Sam’s head, Castiel pressed his forehead to his new brother’s and closed his eyes, reaching out with his grace. He heard Sam gasp and felt the uncertain tendrils of charged grace reach back, tangling tentatively with his own.

“You have a heart filled with so much kindness. You are strong, but that strength has taught you to be gentle. You are one of the bravest men I have ever met and I have stood in the Heavens of warrior kings. You have been cursed with a life filled with darkness and yet your soul is a beacon, a star so bright I could not help but seek it out. For all that you have been forced to endure, you have come out of it with grace an angel would envy.” He opened his eyes, meeting a hazel gaze filled with tears and so much hope. “Were all of humanity half the man you were, Sam Winchester, Hell would have no purpose, for Heaven would be filled with Saints.” He pulled back and stared firmly into Sam’s face, watching as the tears fell down his cheeks. “Had my Father had no grace to offer you to fix your soul, I would have gladly offered mine. There is no angel in all of Heaven who deserves it more than you.”

“Cas.” Sam’s voice broke on his name. He reached out, fingers stretching for what, Castiel did not know, but something tumbled to the bed from Sam’s hands and landed on the mattress between them.

It was a stone.

_A simple stone._

It glittered like starlight.

_Simple._

It ached with the void of empty space.

_Just a stone._

It burned with darkness.

_A boring_

Like poison.

_Little_

Deadly.

_Normal_

Terrible.

_Harmless_

S _t_ o _n_ e

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cafuné is a Brazilian Portuguese word that means “the act of running your hands through someone’s hair in a loving way.”
> 
> The technical term for “goosebumps” is piloerection or the pilomotor reflex, and it actually is a phenomenon that, in our ancestors, would have raised our hair and made us look bigger, like birds do when they raise their feathers to scare off predators. While goosebumps can appear when someone is cold, they are also triggered by high emotions, such as fear, euphoria, and sexual arousal.
> 
> Goosebumps is the colloquial term used for this vestigial reflex because the formation on your skin looks very much like the flesh of a goose after its feathers have been plucked. Why they chose a goose over other birds who have the same appearance is unknown, but I don’t really think duckbumps would sound the same, and chickens already have a pox named after them.
> 
> If you’re interested in learning more about these various phenomena, click on the appropriate links below:
> 
> Goosebumps - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_bumps  
> Vestigial Reflexes - https://allyouneedisbiology.wordpress.com/tag/vestigial-reflex/  
> Fight-or-Flight Response - https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/fear2.htm
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	10. Lacuna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel has heard Sam scream like this before. He has made Sam feel this way before. It is a feelings of loss he is familiar with and cannot bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** This chapter has so much angst. Also deals with grief, temporary character death, guilt, Mystery Spot and the aftermath, and panic attacks.
> 
> This chapter contains **feels**. Like, I'm not kidding. This thing is fourteen pages of pure angst and a wee bit of fluff and flashbacks and flashbacks _within_ flashbacks and it's all Gabriel. It also turned out way longer than I had planned and I haven't updated this in forever so Gabe's chapter has been split in two. 
> 
> Super thanks to TotalNovakTrash, TheRiverScribe, and HyruleHearts1123 for being so awesome as to beta this as I was writing. And for screaming at me. Frequently. Love you guys.

He was not dead.

He remembered death. Remembered the way Nothing felt against his grace as he dimmed to an ember and then was snuffed out. Remembered… not remembering… a blank void across his mind where there should have been Knowing, except that he wasn’t and so there was nothing to see… anything. He remembers, in hindsight, how being dead had felt then, and this was not death. Only… he was lost.

His grace was stretched and scattered across the world like the white-tufted seeds of a dandelion blown on a wishful breath. He was floating on the whim of a dream and the call of winds he couldn’t remember the names for.

Scattered. Unseen and unseeing, his mind wandered, stretching in all directions, reaching without wanting across an expanse as silent as the world before Light. There should have been sounds here, should there not? The world * _was*_ and so there should be sounds and yet…

It was not The Nothing and yet… there was nothing.

He mind stretched, seeking without aim, carried on a force he did not know forward and backward across time, and then into and through and beneath and over, until he found… something. Whispers of things that weren’t but could be, might have been, might be, will not be, should never be. His mind screamed as he tasted death and nothing and everything and love and hate and pain and fury and vengeance and darkness and cold caged, bound, locked chained beaten silenced sewn bleedingburntbeatenlostlostlostlostlostlostlostlostlost

He stumbled.

Faltered.

Fell.

There was no breath to be had here, no air to draw in to fuel his lungs. There was no wind, but something rushed past him as he fell, as he tumbled through time and space, through eternity, through darkness and a blackness so deep he did not know if he had no eyes or if there was no world to see. It was The Nothing. The Nothing and Forever and Eternity and Endless Sleep, loneliness, aloneness, forever separated from those he loved, from names he couldn’t remember, from faces that had no color, from feelings that had no meaning. He felt memory slip away from him like sand through a sieve and his mind * _howled*_ but he could not cry out. He had no lips. No voice. His grace churned within him like a storm but there was no responding wind.

He felt what should have been his wings, should have been his own saving grace, trailing behind him like dead skin. Useless banners parading his own funeral as he fell forever

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The ticking hands of a clock had no meaning here. Minutes were forevers and seconds didn’t exist. Hours were illusory, days a myth. Years a cryptid, and centuries a legend. Millennia were stories long forgotten and time… meant nothing.

How long he remained there, he didn’t know. How long he was deaf, blind, mute, and without feeling, he could not tell. Only that the darkness was all-consuming and everywhere.

And then

* * *

The sound of Sam screaming was terrible, because it was not new. It is a sound Gabriel had heard before. Too many times to count.

Too many times to count.

Too many times to count was a human phrase. It had no place in the mouth of an angel, for angels had all the time. Gabriel could freeze time, could rewind it, could go back and count every second.

Too many times to count?

Gabriel _wished._

100 times.

100 is the number of times Sam claimed Dean died one Tuesday in Broward County. 100, he has said - Gabriel has heard him say it - for the benefit of Dean. Dean, who had nagged Sam for weeks after that Wednesday - _the_ Wednesday - after Gabriel brought the eldest Winchester back.

He remembers the conversation, of course, because he was there. Remembers the terrible two and half weeks after he brought Dean back, after Sam’s tears had been too much to bear on top of a lesson unlearned. He remembers, time back to rights and the brothers back on the road and Broward County far behind them and yet hounding them like a hellbeast, when the drive that had the younger Winchester hunting him for six long months simply… vanished.

Gabriel had loathed every second of those months, watching rage and obsession turn Sam Winchester into a mindless killing machine, no better than the creatures he and his brother had long-hunted. But they had nothing on those eighteen days after Dean was back by his brother’s side.

Eighteen days of a tall, strong, stubborn, genius of a man, reduced to a broken shell, more like a child than a man. Gabriel had watched, bemused at first, then alarmed, as the relentless hunter who had chased him across North America clung to the hem of his brother’s shirt like a frightened toddler. As he woke, jerking himself to attention at the smallest sound, the words of _Asia_ so loud within his memory, it was like the world was screaming them. He recalled the first time Sam woke to an empty hotel room, and his concern turned into horror at the resulting panic attack. The shouted cries of his brother’s name so harsh they scraped his throat raw even before they had the hotel manager calling the police. Only Dean’s return, the older Winchester smelling like the local diner and breakfast food, was able to calm Sam even remotely, and then they were running, throwing their bags into the Impala and tearing out of the hotel parking lot before the police could arrive.

It took Sam hours to completely calm down and the brothers spent the night at a rest stop off the main highway, Sam curled up tight against Dean, his face pressed into the leather of his jacket and Dean’s fingers warm on the back of his neck. The nightmares were frequent and terrible, and his sleep restless.

That had only been day three.

Gabriel hadn’t planned on lingering. He’d intended to disappear back into his witness protection, bury himself in Pagan worship, and hedonism, and do his very best to forget about the Winchesters and the angels meant to wear them.

But it hadn’t been 100 days.

100 was significant, of course. He wondered if Sam knew that. He wondered if Sam had counted. With that great big brain of his, so accustomed to sucking up every ounce of information he could find, Gabriel bet Sam had never had a choice. He wouldn’t have been able to keep from counting. Wouldn’t have been able to stop even if he’d wanted to.

Gabriel knew he had wanted to.

But the numbers kept growing, the count kept going, like a mental journal Gabriel’s reset couldn’t steal away.

So much more than 100 days.

And so he stayed. Watched. Grew steadily more concerned as Sam pulled further and further away from his brother. Pulled into himself. Gabriel could see the switch shutting off reality, shutting off _feeling_ , and that was so much more terrifying than the rage.

Humans _felt_. They were creatures born, bred, and bathed in emotion. They connected to each other with it, their own Dad-Given grace, and to shut it off, to turn away from it, was anathema.

100 days.

He remembers the days that ended in Sam screaming. He remembers the tears. He remembers the rage against Heaven, the prayers, the shouted accusations at a god that didn’t care. Those days were… bad.

But the worst?

100 days.

“Dude, how many Tuesdays did you have?”

“Enough.”

He remembers the first time _Heat of the Moment_ burst over the speakers of a radio, somewhere in a diner halfway between Nowhere and Timbuktu in a little backwoods, podunk town. He remembers, not the screaming or sudden explosion he would have expected, but the shaking that began beneath the surface, under Sam’s skin. The quivering that started in his very _soul_.

When his hands did start to shake, it was minute. Dean hadn’t even noticed, and Gabriel had been watching them long enough to recognize that Dean _noticed_ when something wasn’t right with Sam. But Sam hadn’t been acting right for days now and the shaking wasn’t new. Any time Dean was out of his sight for more than the millisecond it took to blink, the shaking started. This, though, was only the beginning. Gabriel could feel it like a force of nature, like the rumble of thunder from miles out growing louder as the storm blew closer, until it was right overhead and trembling the sky in tune with bright flashes of electric fire through the rain. This was a destructive force just waiting to be unleashed, prophesied and heralded by a _song._

Gabriel was sitting on the barstool across from their table. He was invisible, of course, and his grace was working to direct anyone from approaching the stools around him in case there were any grace-sensitives in this town. Nevermind that there were two hunters here who were primed to spot the supernatural from miles off. Honestly, following them around was an admittedly bad idea and he should definitely stop, but there was something about the youngest Winchester that just held his attention. If it hadn’t, Gabriel never would have bothered trying to prepare the kid for his brother’s death. Not that it _worked_ . He might have said he didn’t know a more stubborn creature if he didn’t know _himself_ , and didn’t that just reek of karmic retribution.

He turned an invisible glare on the elder Winchester. The idiot was too busy flirting with the waitress to notice his brother could barely hold on to his eating utensils. Not that Sam was using them for anything but pushing food around on his plate. How long had it been since the kid had eaten anything more than a few bites? Days, at least. He could see the loss of energy around Sam like a diminished aura, smokey and shivering in the winds of fate that curled around him. Dulled. Quivering and dull.

The waitress was hardly the sort of person to be flaunted on, anyway. She’d slept with six of her customers that week, slipping out during the night with their wallets in hand, and she was planning on making Dean her lucky number 7.

And if Gabe made sure she was caught stealing from the till later, well… she was annoying him. He was here to watch the brothers and see Sam learned the lesson he was trying to teach (that was _all_ ), not to watch Dean flirt his way through a diner older than dirt.

The first chorus of _Heat of the Moment_ was what finally sent Sam over the edge. His face was red from lack of oxygen, his throat closed up around the panic, but the chorus sent him reeling. His broken cries tore Dean away from the waitress, spinning to look at his little brother and barely managing to avoid having his eye plucked out with a syrup-drenched fork.

His cries had drawn the attention of the whole diner. A couple elderly patrons and the head waitress - a matronly woman who looked ready to wrap Sam in a blanket - rose to come and assist, but Dean was already pulling Sam out of his seat and toward the door, his arms wrapped around his little brother in a tight grip as Sam choked out broken words through sobs that not even Gabriel could make out.

Dean deposited his little brother in the car and the few seconds it took him to move from the passenger side to the driver seat sent Sam screaming. When Dean climbed into the car, he turned the ignition and hit the gas pedal before he’d even closed the door. The Impala kicked dirt and stone out behind it as Dean whipped out of the parking lot and shot down the road.

Gabriel didn’t follow right away. He took a moment to erase the memories of the diner folk with a snap of his fingers, making it so Sam and Dean were never there as far as they knew. The diner had had a peaceful evening other than the waitress getting fired over pinching from the till.

Gabriel let his grace seek out the younger Winchester, following swiftly after him and landing in the backseat in time to hear Dean singing softly, his foot down on the gas pedal as the car tore down the road. The radio was off, but Dean’s voice never quieted, singing softly as his one hand held Sam’s in a tight grip.

Sam wasn’t even paying attention. He was slumped bonelessly in the passenger seat, his face red and wet with tears, but no longer crying. His eyes were dull and distant. His hand was tight around Dean’s but there was no reaction to his brother’s touch beyond that.

It was terrible and Gabe hated every second of it. He wanted to show himself just so the younger Winchester would do _something_.

That was Day 11.

It was Day 17 when it finally happened.

Dean died.  

It was a boring Saturday morning, following the Winchester brothers. Sam hadn’t spoken a word in three days. He barely seemed conscious of reality beyond knowing precisely where Dean was at every second of every day. Even standing right next to him, Gabriel could hardly feel anything from him. No emotion. Nothing.

He’d been prepared to interfere. He figured appearing nonchalantly in their hotel room that evening would be enough to spark Sam back into some semblance of normalcy.

And then Dean got shot.

Again.

What was it with the guy and guns?

Gabriel… he thought about just letting it happen, just letting Dean’s soul go and getting it over with. He would be brought back eventually - that was his destiny. And this would be a clean break for Sam. Outside of Gabriel’s time loop, bad guy already ganked. Bury your brother and _move on_.

Oh, but Sam’s _soul_.

Gabriel had left Heaven so long ago and the individual heavens had been so new, he’d almost forgotten what soulmates looked like.

But there was nothing in the world that looked quite the same as one soul clinging to another.

Gabriel’s time loop hadn’t let Dean’s soul move on. He’d kept it close in the moments between resets. It had been his companion for six long months as he drew Sam on a wild chase, but it had never been in danger of Hell during that time. _Sam_ might not have known that, but his soul obviously recognized the difference, because here…

Here, where Gabriel wasn’t holding the soul of a Righteous Man like a balloon on a string, Dean’s soul was stretching southward, bound for places deep and dark.

And Sam…

Sam was clinging to his brother’s soul with all the strength of his own. Unknowingly, instinctively, fingers clutching and eyes streaming tears, Sam’s soul recognized that this was his brother’s end.

And it was still fighting.

Gabriel could only stare. The closeness of the brothers - a dependency that had passed the border long ago into unhealthy - was a known factor. It was what he was trying to break, to give Sam a fighting chance in a world without his brother.

He stared, watching as Dean’s soul lingered, held fast by the force of Sam’s strength despite the fact that Dean had stopped breathing minutes before.

Hell, though, would not be denied, and he could see it pulling, the weight on Dean’s soul an anchor that not even Sam’s strength could hold against. Gabriel knew it would hurt him, of course, to lose his grip on his brother, but it was inevitable. Ineffable.

Or so he thought.

Until Dean's soul started pulling away, dragged down by the strength of Hell, and _Sam's soul followed_.

For a moment, he did nothing.

Shamefully, he only stood there, too shocked to move.

For a moment, he wondered, in a vague sense, outside of himself, if he shouldn’t just let this happen. If letting both boys go, both boys die here and now, wouldn’t end it all. Stop everything. Finally finish it.

For a moment…

* * *

Michael stands firm as he had ever been. The leader of Heaven’s armies, the archangel that all other angels looked to for direction and guidance. He remained the warrior he had always been, sharp as the blade he carried, stalwart as the shield he bore, wings like crimson fire still as well-groomed as ever. He was still the Commander of Heaven, still demanded respect, still their leader. But… only their leader.

Raphael was still the Healer of Heaven. Still bore the kindness in his heart that let his hands move gently over another’s wings. Still told others to get their wings fixed and still watched the grace of those in Heaven to be sure none was harmed, but he never reached out a hand to heal them himself.

Gabriel watched as his brothers kept the roles they had been given by Heaven, Commander and Healer, but they lost the roles that had been born of their coexistence. It was Lucifer’s creation that made Michael a brother. Raphael had been born into the role, the youngest for a time, until Gabriel had come along. But he watched them pull away from their other brothers -from _him_ \- and into the cold, distant role of a title.

It grew worse as time went on. Michael looked upon his brothers and saw only soldiers. Raphael retreated into solitude, burying himself in books, no longer taking pleasure in watching the growth of flowers. Gabriel tried to draw them out with laughter, but his tricks and games were brushed aside as annoyances or irritation. There was no exasperated smile on Raphael’s lips. No roll of the eyes or teasing from Michael. The eyes of his brothers had grown dull and cold, looking upon him as another angel, another soldier, but not a brother.

They could not be brothers anymore, he surmised, with only three. There were meant to be four of them and the fourth had been lost. Lucifer, cast down, into the depths of darkness, in the belly of the cold, had taken Gabriel’s brothers with them.

He wondered, then: who was it really that had been banished to Hell?

* * *

He snapped his fingers.

He snapped them without even thinking about it.

He didn’t need to breathe and so the lack of oxygen in unmoving lungs shouldn’t be painful, and yet his chest _ached_ in a way it never had. He felt as though he had been struck with Thor’s hammer.

And so he had snapped before he even realized he was going to, and time rippled backward. He could hear the denizens of Hell crying out in fury at the loss of their prize, but none would come to fight him on it. Dean was due to die in less than a year. They would get their Righteous Man, but they were fucking going to have to wait for it.

He snapped and the bullet that had struck Dean’s chest was fired from the gun again, but this time it struck a few inches aft. Blood welled from Dean Winchester’s flesh, but the wound was superficial. It would heal and it wouldn’t even leave a scar, though Gabriel would forever deny that it was _his_ grace that assured such a thing.

He lingered for a few minutes longer, struck still by the pain in Sam’s screams as the boy flew into a panic over the blood. He watched, weary, as Dean tried to calm his brother with growing desperation.

Gabriel had killed Dean so many times during the time loop. He knew precisely how many times. Some of them had been serious deaths, heart-wrenching in their cruelty, but many of them had been ridiculous. They had been meant to break the monotony, to make a joke of it, but the truth was, none of it was funny. None of had been amusing.

There was nothing funny about losing a brother.

Gabriel watched as Dean dragged his sobbing brother into the back seat of the Impala. Watched as he sprawled his own body over Sam’s, forced as much physical contact between them as possible to try and anchor Sam in reality. He watched and listened as Dean began to sing, vocal chords raw with his own tears, a song that had obviously been sung countless times before. His grace churned, ceaselessly curious, and followed the notes of the song back across time, to a childhood that was not what it should have been. Watched as a young Dean Winchester sang to his brother throughout the years, the same words over and over, meant to calm. Even now, meant to soothe.

_"I'm pushin' to stay_

_I'm pushin' to stay with something_

_I'm pushin' to stay with something better.”_

Dean wouldn’t stay.

Couldn’t.

He was damned and destined for Hell.

Demons and Angels both were waiting for his year to be up and there was no stopping it. Even if Gabriel showed himself, even if he intervened, he couldn’t stop it.

The end of the world was coming and there was no fighting it.

He thought for a moment of Sam’s soul, fighting to keep Dean there.

It was a nice gesture, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. In the end, Sam’s soul was dragged down by Hell’s strength. In the end…

In the end, Gabriel’s lesson hadn’t taught Sam what he’d been hoping it would, but it had taught Gabriel something.

100 days had taught him something.

Because it hadn’t been one hundred times that Gabriel had killed Dean Winchester.

The time loop had lasted a year.

365 days.

One day for each day that Dean lived with his deal hanging over both brothers like Damocles’ sword. A year of deaths for the year of living that would be a waxing Hell for both brothers.

Sam had only counted the 100, though.

100 days.

Gabriel closed his eyes and turned away from the brothers. He buried his grace back beneath the wild Pagan magic that was all he was now. No more Gabriel the Archangel. There could be only Loki the Trickster from here until the end of time, no matter how close that end was. Only a wild Pagan God determined to live life to the fullest and ignore the doom on the horizon.

It simply hurt too much to be Gabriel.

To know that for 365 days, Dean Winchester had died in various, creative ways that left Sam a broken, weeping mess.

365 days where Dean died.

And 100 days…

100 days when it was _Sam_ who killed him.

Because he just wanted it to be over.

Gabriel knew the feeling. Knew how much it hurt to lose brothers. Knew how painful it was to get them back, and yet not fully have them.

He knew the desperation of wanting it to just… end. Please. Just let it be over.

Gabriel buried the part of him that was an archangel down deep beneath Loki and the let the wild magic carry him where it would, so long as it was far away from here. Far away from a boy who was too much like himself, from a pain that was too familiar, from a longing that still burned like acid in his own chest.

Gabriel tried to choke off the part of him that was an archangel but it just _wouldn’t_ **_die_ **.

He fled.

Behind him, Dean Winchester clung to his brother in a desperate attempt to soothe away his fears and Gabriel’s envy was a consuming sin that damned his own grace.

He’d give up everything, he thought, for one chance to be held by a brother again.

He’d give up the whole fucking world for a brother.

And it scared him that, given the choice, he didn’t know which one he would choose.

And so once again he chose himself, and fled.

Ever the coward.

* * *

“Gabriel.”

Was that… was that his name?

Gabriel.

Was that… who he was?

“Come, My Messenger.”

Messenger.

He was The Messenger.

“Come, My Son.”

Father…

“Awake.”

**_Light._ **

Gabriel opened his eyes to the pure embodiment of every color, every prismatic blend the Universe had to offer, and the first sound that slipped from his mouth in what felt like an eternity was a sob that nearly tore his grace asunder. He cried out, a wordless sound that slid past lips that felt bloody and cold.

_Father…_

There were no hands, no lips, no limbs. His Father, in his truest form, was pure light, unending and beautiful, and it surrounded Gabriel in a warmth like being swathed in the heartbeat of the Universe. Gabriel felt himself curl up like a child, his trueform coiling in and over itself like he was some great long snake and not a force of cosmic elemental power taller than the Earth. The light curled around him, warmth caressing every inch of his grace, and Gabriel wept.

The Light was warm and soothing on his grace and he could feel it caressing his feathers. Around him, the Universe hummed songs too ancient for translation, for they had been sung when Time first began, long before Words had even been a thought. The notes hummed with color, ever-changing, across his mind and time, tangling in his grace, and Gabriel felt at home in a way he had been missing for far too long. Tension he had long grown accustomed to faded and an ache he had forgotten burned in his center finally, _finally_ eased. The wound over his heart - not the one caused by Lucifer’s blade, for all that it seemed to strike the same place - finally healed and Gabriel could only gasp as he felt something like _life_ flood back into his grace.

He hadn’t been dead. He hadn’t been… and yet.

“Hush, My son. Be at peace.”

“Father.” The word trembled on his lips, unfitting, not right, and for a moment he floundered, searching for the wrongness, to fix it as he had been fixed. “Dad,” he gasped.

The Light hummed, glimmering a prism of color in gentle amusement, and Gabriel felt so bright.

“This moment is yours, Gabriel.”

_Mine?_

“I have seen all things, divined all things, know all things, am all things. This moment is also then, at the very Beginning. As I shine My Light across the worlds, I see this moment. The Moment for which I have, did, and will create you.”

Gabriel felt his breath catch.

This? This was his reason? His…

“You are My Messenger and you have passed many messages in your life. By My Will, you will pass many more, but this will be the most important of them all. This is why I created you.”

His Purpose.

All angels had a purpose. They were born to it. It was a part of their element and their grace. Messengers and Soldiers and Healers - they had a Reason For Being, a duty to perform that gave them Life. It was their grace. But to know the singular moment - _The Moment_ \- for which he was built, for which his grace was so carefully formed…

“Tell me, Father. Please.”

“Your brothers and sisters are lost, Gabriel, as you were lost. The shadows have caught at them, pulled them away from each other, and severed bonds weakened by neglect and grief. They are all as alone as you were, moments ago.”

_Millennia ago_ , Gabriel thought, for surely it could not have been moments. He did not say so, however. His mind stretched out, instead, seeking his brothers and sisters.

What he felt…

If not for the warmth of his Father, for the Light that held him in an incomprehensible hold, Gabriel would have fallen into the darkness that held his siblings fast and never risen from it. It was the endless Nothing. It was _aloneness_ and the separation of their grace, severed from love and light and everything that made them what they were. It was not mere death. It was _extinction_ . It was forever and never. It was the Never-Was and the Will-Not-Be. The erasure of angels. It was the snuffing of a candle’s flame before it was even lit. It was time removing them from existence and shutting the world off from their _being_ , from their _having-been_.

But angels had been there from the start, had helped form the world, built it from its roots. The archangels had helped create the creatures that first roamed the earth, those that came in the days before the first human was lured from the ocean’s depths and onto land.

Gabriel felt the world twisting like metal under too much pressure. Not even the Universe’s natural tendency toward balance would allow it to compensate for the loss of the angels. They could not be blanked over with the void space that had erased lesser creatures in the past, those best left forgotten even by those with the minds to remember. Angels were the scaffolds of this world and it could not stand without them. Already it had begun to unravel.

“I created you for this moment above all others. You are My Messenger. I gifted you with a voice that can reach across time and space, a mind that can carry the vast knowledge of the world, and a heart capable of bearing all the love and grief My greatest and worst creations can offer. And I granted all of My children with ears that will hear you, Gabriel, Archangel, Messenger, Son. Call to them, Gabriel, and heal the bonds that foolishness have broken.”

He couldn’t fathom how. His grace stretched out, touching every angel, recognizing each grace. He knew their names, their faces, the play of flame and earth, water and air in all its forms against his grace, but so too could he feel time like sands receding beneath his feet, sucked out to sea on a gasping wave that threatened to return bearing destruction and erasure. A tidal force of Darkness like that which they had feared at the Beginning. The Darkness, and yet deeper, older, and more feral still. Not the shadows of Amara, who touched everywhere his Father did not, but the Before. The Void. The Empty. What was pre-Existence.

Gabriel saw the vast emptiness like a great dragon risen before him and he, a mere knight, so dim and dreary a light beneath its shadow, could not hope to survive.  Could not save himself, far less his family. Could not even run, as he had done before, and doom them. Less than a coward.

Useless.

“Dad!” he cried, and felt the tears like shame hot on his cheeks. “Dad, I can’t! I’m sorry! Please!”

_Please do it yourself. Please come back. Please help me._

“Dad!”

**_“This Moment is yours. It is why I created you. All of you, from the first thought of you that entered my mind and past another thousand millennia, far from now, when humans have long since left this earth for other worlds and times, and have forgotten us for a time. This moment, My son, is yours.”_ **

He couldn’t. He wasn’t enough. He was too small. He wasn’t as bright as Lucifer, as strong as Michael, as gentle as Raphael. He was the littlest, the weakest, the one who ran and hid. The coward. The screw-up. Gabriel, the least of the archangels. How could this moment be _his_?

_All of you,_ his mind whispered, and Gabriel shied away from the words. He had avoided talking about where he had gone when he left Heaven. When he was with the Winchesters, he felt free to be both sides - the archangel Gabriel and the Pagan God Loki - but not when he was with his Father. They had spoken of many things, but not of this. Not of Gabriel making a vessel and choosing a name and letting a theology be built around him, accepting sacrifices and offerings and delving into hedonism to the point where he could well have borne a crown as Prince of Hell and taken his pick of sin.

They hadn’t discussed it and Gabriel had only assumed his Father’s disapproval, for how could he _not_?

_“All of you.”_

“Dad,” Gabriel whispered, as the wave of darkness rose up before him, curled over him, like a lover bending low to plant a deadly, desperate kiss. Gabriel, his mind touching every angel as they careened in silent agony through Nothing and Forever, his grace _burning_ , touched that spot inside him that sang with a different sort of power - a magic that smelled of spring blossoms and crisp autumn apples and thick, sweet summer honey. The part of him that was Loki, was pure nature, Pagan to his core, reached back and grasped his grace with a magic that had been born of the Earth. Gabriel and Loki mirrored each other across the chasm in his mind that kept them apart, that let him exist as a Pagan or as an Archangel, but not both. Never both.

Gabriel drew a deep breath

Closed his eyes

And bridged the gap.

“Father?” he whispered, as he felt his grace flood with the life of the his favorite planet, felt his eyes burn with the heart of the Earth’s molten core.

“Did I do right?”

And then

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Lacuna_ is a Latin word that means "a blank space; a missing part."
> 
> Note: No. That is not a typo. That is how the chapter ends. ;)

**Author's Note:**

>  _Ohrwurm_ is the German word for a song/tune that gets stuck in your head. It translates literally as "earworm" and is where that particularly term comes from.


End file.
